Half-built, fully promoted: Farrugia showcases ‘40% complete’ project

Inclusion Minister Julia Farrugia showing up at a construction site that’s barely halfway done and packaging it as an achievement is less “milestone” and more “photo-op with scaffolding.” A building that is “around 40% complete” isn’t a success story.

The building, intended as a respite centre for minors with special needs and their families, is being constructed in Dingli, one of the towns in the seventh electoral district, which is home to the Inclusion Minister’s voter base.

It is an Aġenzija Sapport project – the national agency responsible for providing services to people with special needs and their families, which also falls within Farrugia’s ministerial portfolio.

While vague announcements about unfinished projects became all but normalised in the build-up to these general elections, the overlap between Farrugia’s role as an MP elected on the seventh district and the use of state resources to elevate the minister’s profile as a candidate is emblematic of the Labour Party’s electoral strategy.

The minister’s press release about the visit, which included several photos and even a news cut reel showing bare walls and scaffolding, is also rendered pointless by the open admission that the project is far from complete.

The same press release presents the €750,000 project as proof of the government’s commitment to “implement concrete measures to support families”, a measure from last year’s budget which amounts to “direct investment in the quality of life of persons with disabilities and their families”.

Upon its completion, the respite centre is expected to accommodate up to 10 people at a time. Service users would typically stay for a short while, with priority generally reserved for urgent situations in which the user needs space to recover from a specific situation.

The CEO of Aġenzija Sapport, Oliver Scicluna, accompanied the Inclusion Minister during her brief visit to the site.

Scicluna was co-opted to parliament as an MP in 2021, before an unsuccessful bid as a Labour Party candidate in 2022. It is not yet known whether Scicluna intends to run again this year.