A long-promised project to roof over part of the Regional Road in Santa Venera remains in limbo, the Nationalist Party has noted, with two successive environment ministers failing to bring the Labour Party electoral promise to fruition. 

PN spokesperson Peter Agius and Santa Venera councillor Darren Carabott said that residents of the central town were being treated like second-class citizens, with politicians first promising the project in an attempt to win votes, only to then do nothing to bring it about. 

“Stop playing with residents’ emotions and using this health issue for political gain,” Carabott, who will be running as a PN candidate in the next general election, said. 

Thousands of cars drive through Regional Road every day, with their exhaust fumes presenting a health hazard to residents who live in the Santa Venera neighbourhoods nearby. 

The Labour Party promised to look into the possibility of roofing over that stretch of road in 2017, including a promise to that effect in its 2017 electoral manifesto. The plan would see the Santa Venera tunnel extended, with the roofed-over section becoming a public garden for locals. 

Two years later and just before local council elections, Jose Herrera, who served as environment minister at the time, said that a €20 million study had been completed and said the roofing would be completed within “three to four years”. 

But the project appears to have been placed on the backburner, with no planning applications filed and no more announcements about the plans. 

In July 2020, Infrastructure Malta told Times of Malta that the project was still in its initial phases and being coordinated by the Environment Ministry.

Aaron Farrugia, who replaced Herrera as Environment Minister, said last May that geotechnical studies would soon be completed and that the challenge would finding ways of financing it. 

Both Herrera and Farrugia were elected from the first district, which includes Santa Venera, the PN noted in its statement on Monday.  

Finance Minister Clyde Caruana said during this year’s budget speech that the government was considering a public-private partnership for the project. No more detail was provided.