Infrastructure minister’s dubious ‘1,000 projects’ claim revived

Infrastructure Minister Chris Bonett claimed that Infrastructure Malta, the state agency under his remit, has completed “1,000 road interventions” in the past two years, an unconvincing figure contradicted by a previous announcement from the same ministry.

“In these past two years alone, we covered 1,000 roads – some were reconstructed, some were resurfaced…we needed to take difficult decisions which, in the eyes of people in general, might seem like small interventions,” Bonett said on Monday.

“But these were all issues in which we needed to make a decision, and that’s what we did. We did work that was maybe impossible for others to complete,” he adds, without specifying why routine roadworks could ever be considered ‘impossible’ to conclude.

Bonett’s declaration, made during a press conference held on Monday, contradicts the same claim made in November 2025 that the same number of projects had been made in that year.  A Freedom of Information (FOI) request filed by The Shift towards the end of last year revealed that the original claim was largely overstated due to the inclusion of routine maintenance works like cleaning out culverts, replacing bollards, and so on.

If both claims had to be taken at face value, the Infrastructure Minister is effectively either correcting the original claim by tacitly admitting that more time was required than previously stated or simply recycling the same figure as part of a cosmetic marketing exercise.

The minister’s claim is undermined by the lack of detail in the press release, which does not name any of the “interventions” except for three major infrastructure projects: the Msida Creek project, the refurbishment of Buġibba square, and the regeneration of Marsaskala’s promenade.

Unsurprisingly, the press release makes no mention of the public backlash that all three of those major projects have received, largely due to the ministry’s incoherent planning.

The Msida Creek project was immediately panned by a coalition of NGOs, with Infrastructure Malta nonetheless forging ahead with its original plans to effectively turn central Msida into a flyover.

Meanwhile, the costs of the refurbishment of Buġibba’s square have increased over tenfold, with the minister refusing to explain how the project’s budget was inflated to such an extent.

In Marsaskala, one of Bonett’s key constituencies, at least €18 million is being spent on the regeneration of the coastal town’s promenade, another major project which remains shrouded in secrecy after the minister’s refusal to respond to this website’s questions.

Overall, public opinion about the minister’s handling of the country’s bustling road network appears to be consistently negative, with several social media users reacting to the national broadcaster’s report on Bonett’s latest claim by questioning whether roads being dug up multiple times to redo poorly executed works were also being counted in the tally.