At a time when many Maltese start crossing over to Gozo for some rest and recreation, as opposed to duty and work, some have already come back grumbling and worse at the state of Gozo.

The worst, they report, are the roads – especially the road from Victoria to Mġarr. It is one long series of blocked roads, interminable traffic deviations and reportedly not well-planned and not well-signed alternative routes. It has even been said that to go from one end of Victoria to another, people were being re-routed through Għasri, no less (although this deviation may have been corrected over the past days).

It is not just the roads that are up. The work on the Villa Rundle gardens has been claimed to be ‘nearly ready’ for months now, and there’s still no end in sight. The same, and more, can be said of the Żewwieqa project, which began later and is still rather delayed.

Now it is not as if there are no comparable delays in traffic in Malta due to roadworks. The whole road network north of Mellieħa is a case in point, both on the Ċirkewwa road and the Mellieħa bypass road. And there are also the works ongoing on the airport road and the Valletta Waterfront one.

But Gozo is... Gozo. Visitors do not expect delays, circuitous routes, insufficient signage.

There is also a problem in Victoria, in the sense that no initiative has been taken to facilitate traffic by the creation of a ringroad around the centre. So when there are works on the main road leading to the island’s capital near the centre, as they are doing now, chaos and confusion is the result.

The problem with Gozo is also that for all the grumbling, it is always the same company that gets the tenders; possibly this is because it may not be all that simple to get a company from over the water, even if it is in Malta, to take up the tender.

Having said all that, one must admit that the roads that have been completed are wonderful – the road to Mġarr itself on the Għajnsielem side, the road nearer San Lawrenz (but curiously not the road continuing to Dwejra) and the road to Xlendi, after some initial hiccups.

One would not want this general grumble to mean that the works should not have been undertaken but that there should have been better management throughout. And certainly better traffic management. If the Gozo residents know well where the alternative routes are, the visitors from Malta or from abroad certainly don’t.

At this time of the year, people, especially Maltese, start making short trips to Gozo and renting farmhouses and apartments there. Gozo must not scare away the goose that lays the golden eggs. The availability of cheap air tickets, cheap hotels and even cheap restaurants in so many destinations now served by the low-cost carriers are already very attractive as they are.

Besides, think of the cumulative impact these detours are having on Gozitans who work or study in Malta – not just the detours in Gozo but also the detours they encounter when they cross over to Malta. On a rough estimate, they must add between half an hour to an hour to the already long time spent in commuting.

The sooner the works are over and the roads reopened, the better.