Traffic “chaos” in Qormi was further proof that the Labour government has failed in traffic management, PN shadow transport minister Mark Anthony Sammut said on Tuesday.

“Traffic chaos is being felt all over Malta every day, and every day we are spending more time stuck in traffic jams,” Sammut said.

He said the government has taken no concrete action to address the root of the problem and find ways to reduce the number of cars on Malta’s roads.

“Public transport is unreliable; you cannot trust the bus to pass on time, or whether it will be full when it arrives,” Sammut said.

The public bus might be free, he said, but people did not avoid using it due to the price; they avoided it because of its unreliability.

He said the Nationalist Party has a holistic plan to improve public transport, introduce a mass transit system, and improve infrastructure for cyclists, pedestrians, and motorbikes.

A PN government would also introduce incentives to promote remote working and for people to ditch their cars.

Sammut was flanked by shadow infrastructure minister Joe Giglio, Qormi council minority leader Ralph Puli, and constituency MPs Jerome Caruana Cilia and Ryan Callus.

Giglio said that the government had shown incompetence in its lack of planning road works.

“It happens too often that a road is repaired and is immediately dug back up for a different reason,” he said.

Puli said recent road works in Qormi were meant to reduce congestion but “it has only become worse.”

While Qormi was seeing a steep increase in commercial development, the government was not making sufficient infrastructural investment to manage the traffic increases that come with such development, he said.

Callus and Caruana Cilia, who were elected in Qormi, said residents from the area constantly described how difficult living amidst the chaos had become.

“People tell me that it takes 45 minutes and sometimes even an hour just to get out of Qormi,” Caruana Cilia said.