One failed minister

 If there is one incompetent minister in Robert Abela’s cabinet it is Aaron Farrugia, Minister for Transport, Infrastructure and Capital Projects. He has failed miserably in every department under his responsibility.

Traffic congestion is one of the most frustrating issues that drivers, Maltese and foreign, face daily, day in and day out.  In 2014, Audrey Testaferrata de Noto, an Infrastructure Malta official, made a name for herself when she described traffic congestion as ‘a perception’.

The minister went one step, if not five, further. After blaming infrastructural works and school transport for the delays, with a straight face, he blamed local village feasts for causing the daily traffic pandemonium.

Farrugia even suggested that the Maltese should choose whether to promote feasts to tourists or drive without traffic and avoid Malta’s traffic problems. Daily grid-locked roads have become the order of the day, with frustrated drivers stuck for hours with mounting road rage.

Farrugia is responsible for infrastructure, and here again, he failed miserably. Roadworks throughout the island are done without planning, causing chaos.

The Kirkop project is a case in point with passengers leaving taxis and walking to the airport. Even former PL leader Alfred Sant was very critical.

The Għadira road has been partly closed for the past two years, and there is no sign of a completion date. And to make matters worse, it looks like it will be with just one lane both ways, creating another bottleneck.

Residential roads are, simply put, a disaster. While spending hundreds of millions on major thoroughfares, little has been done on residential roads. Most of the village roads are full of potholes to the irritation of drivers.

Yet the minister is unfazed as he is driven in his Tesla.  A few years back, the government, with much pomp, proposed a €700 million project to build anew all residential roads. Driving in villages is proof that this was another big lie.

Earlier this year, Farrugia launched a national road safety programme to lessen fatal accidents on our roads. But apart from raising traffic fines, nothing happened except that figures released by the statistics office show that during the first three months of this year, accidents were up by more than 6% over the same period in 2022.

Likewise, traffic casualties increased by 13% over the same period last year. These figures show that the strategy failed miserably if there ever was one.

Transport Malta, under the remit of the same minister, is in a dreadful state as scandal after scandal surfaces, from corrupt practices for issuing driving licences to officers beating drivers. Yet Aaron looks as if nothing is wrong, and he still faces the media ever so often, usually to embarrassingly put his foot in his mouth.

It is unknown whether Aaron Farrugia intends to hire more consultants to help him solve all these issues. According to his reply in the House of Representatives, he currently employs 36 expert consultants at a cost of  €700,000 a year.

                           

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KLAUS
KLAUS
9 months ago

In fact, he is not the only one who is a highly questionable person.

Streets where pedestrians have priority (pedestrian zones), or even cyclists (bicycle lanes) have priority over cars, you almost have to leave Malta.

That there are actually still traffic lights here in Malta that have no consideration for pedestrians makes it even worse.

In any European country, the person responsible would have been thrown out on the spot if he had planned and approved something as dangerous as the routes at the airport, for example.

When I then see the senseless racing ministers with police protection chasing through the streets, then the last Maltese can recognize: 

They’re crazy, the wannabes.

makjavel
makjavel
9 months ago

He will need a consultant for his Tesla , unless he has one already. By the way anybody knows if the Gozo Electric Buses are being fully used? and what about the Sore to Ship connection in Grand harbour for the Cruise Liners? Are they still bellowing carcinogenic brown smoke , the equivalent all the cars in Malta for a day, every day they are in port?

Evelyn
Evelyn
9 months ago

Instead of reconstructing roads he is using the exact amount of money to pay useless consultants ……..but good for votes.

wenzu
wenzu
9 months ago

The normal standard of incompetence from the current government- and people actually look up to these morons?

Paul Cordina
Paul Cordina
9 months ago

This minister was not even a ‘starter’. The first blunder he made was alluding to the ‘United States of Europe’ when referring to the EU. Even a 10 year old knows which is right. I refer to the completion of the Zabbar-Marsaskala old road. What completion? There are still unfinished walls, non usage of new lighting system, even a drainage grill was just tarmaced over because it was at a lower level than the new road surface. Another unfinished project by the most incompetent minister

A. Fan
A. Fan
9 months ago

Sheer incompetence would be an improvement over outright graft with most PL ministers and other appointees!

Rita Camilleri
Rita Camilleri
9 months ago

40 mins from San gwann to sliema!yes perception !!morons!!

Paul Henry Berman
Paul Henry Berman
9 months ago

How did the Minister find 36 people dumber than him?

Out of Curiosity
Out of Curiosity
9 months ago

Let us be fair to say that Aaron Farrugia should not take all the blame on this, since he is not the mastermind behind the importation of cheap labour and cheap tourists. This is simply the collective incompetence of a labour government who continues to lead our country towards a dead end, as a result of more importation of people from third world countries, continuous corruption, inability to regulate the construction industry and knowingly rather than unwittingly, by treating the Maltese as second clsss citizens who are always expected to adapt to unbearable situations, whether we like it or not.

Saul Pullican
Saul Pullican
9 months ago

Dumb and dumber. PART 2.

joe tedesco
joe tedesco
9 months ago

THE PL GOVERNMENT HAS DISGRACED MALTA AND THE
MALTESE.

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