Residents in properties along the new €53 million Coast Road are complaining of “shoddy” and “incomplete” works at Salini which they claim are putting their lives in danger.

Accompanying Times of Malta along the new road, which was opened for traffic in time for the CHOGM summit last November, residents complained that most of the works remained unfinished including important things such as lights at zebra crossing, pavements, access roads and other amenities.

“You take your life in your hands if you cross the road at night,” a 22-year-old told the Times of Malta.

“The road has some eight zebra crossings, but to this day none of them have lights. Motorists can’t see pedestrians crossing,” he said.

Act before someone is killed

Another resident, who lives in Salina, complained that Transport Malta has not installed traffic lights, even though these were included in the original plans. “Traffic lights have not materialised, notwithstanding signs indicating the contrary,” the 56-year-old woman said.

“Tourists from the Salini complex (ex-Coastline) also face danger when they attempt to cross to the bus stop on the other side of the road as they have to negotiate three lanes on a double-bend with very fast moving cars. Do we really have to wait until someone is killed before these simple issues are addressed?” she said.

Asked why zebra crossings along this important arterial road, dubbed by Transport Malta in a promotional video as “the most beautiful road in Malta”, were not in place yet, a spokesman for Transport Malta referred the newspaper to a parliamentary question by Nationalist MP Ċensu Galea in which Minister Joe Mizzi said that lights would be installed “around the middle of next March”, but did not give any information about the zebra crossings

The Times of Malta is informed that residents have even sent e-mails to the Prime Minister complaining about the shortcomings, including new access roads to the Salini hamlet which were removed from the original plans.

“We have not yet heard anything from Dr Muscat,” one of these residents said. Earlier this week the Times of Malta revealed that the government cut corners on many of the works in the original plans in order to save money.

Last year, the European Court of Auditors said the government had broken EU procurement rules and reduced its allocation of EU funds by some €11 million.

But the government boasted that following re-negotiations with the contractors it had saved €30 million in project costs.

However, it now appears that the savings were made as a result of omitted works. These include long stretches of pavements and retaining walls, safety barriers, drip irrigation ducts, storm water reservoirs, pump rooms, shifting of utilities, storm water drains and other special features.

Soon after its inauguration the new Coast Road flooded twice.

However, according to Transport Malta this had nothing to do with the omitted works but was a result of a defect in a storm water system in T’Alla w Ommu road.