Drains have been leaking sewage wastewater into the street in front of Msida’s Kulleġġ bus stop since Thursday evening. Msida mayor Charles Selvaggi told this newsroom that the area was flooded again on Friday morning, despite government workers arriving on site to handle blockage the previous day.

Mayor Selvaggi told The Malta Independent that he and his local council was not informed on what caused this sewage leak to flood the tarmacked area where buses stop for commuters at the Kulleġġ bus stop, which is just down of the Junior College.

Mayor Selvaggi suspects that these sewage leaks are a result of the area’s overdevelopment and the increase in the number of households there through erected apartment blocks.

An unnamed government worker reportedly told Mayor Selvaggi and the rest of his locality’s Local Council that the problem is not the blockage per se, but that the infrastructure cannot handle the number of new apartments that have been constructed in the area.

On this point, he told this newsroom that Msida has witnessed “enormous development” in recent years, yet sewage infrastructure has not been simultaneously upgraded. In this regard, he pointed out that if a street and surrounding sewage infrastructure go from having ten houses to 100 apartments, “then it is obvious that it is not going to be able to cope.”

Mayor Selvaggi remarked that from memory, he doesn’t recall many sewage pipes being upgraded (“near to nothing”).

“This is a problem which we maybe aren’t recognising how big it is. There are other areas that may unknowingly also be overflowing underground that we might observe next week,” the Msida mayor said.

The Msida mayor said that government workers had first showed up to handle these sewage leaks at around 5pm on Thursday, after they were first observed and reported. Despite them informing him that they had gone to address the issue that same evening, on Friday morning, Mayor Selvaggi noticed that the bus landing was once again flooded with wastewater during his morning walk in the locality at around 6:30am.

Since Friday morning, the Msida Local Council has contacted the relevant government departments twice more to inform them that the problem is still there. By late Friday afternoon, at around 4pm, the Msida Local Council said it had not been notified whether workers had successfully addressed these sewage leaks again or not.

He commented that to properly address this issue, authorities must look beyond this single blockage and hire an expert to come up with a solution.

He added that, excluding the bus terminus, the two bus stops affected by this sewage leakage are two of the most popular bus stops across the Maltese islands. Selvaggi continued that the manhole in question is in front of Qrejten Street, which lies in Pietà, and hence this is not only affecting Msida residents and bus users, but even Pietà residents.