The Gozo Ministry’s handling of roadworks has been singled out as an area of concern by the National Audit Office, after a number of issues highlighted years ago remained unaddressed.   

In 2017, the NAO had published a report on maintaining and repairing Gozo’s road network.

The report had looked into whether the Gozo Ministry was managing road works efficiently, “while observing the principles of good governance, accountability, transparency and good value for money”.  

Three years later, significant shortcomings highlighted in that report remained unaddressed, the NAO said in a follow-up report published on Wednesday. 

The follow-up report looked at six different audits NAO staff had previously carried out. While recommendations made in the five other audits were largely followed up on, the same could not be said of the Gozo Ministry.  

Issues first flagged in 2017 still prevailed to a "considerable extent," the NAO found. This was especially worrying given that the financial allocation to address road works in Gozo has significantly increased since the original report.

The original audit had urged the ministry to streamline its human resource pool and make sure that it got full value from its employees for the money it invested in their wages.  

In the follow-up report, the NAO said that although staff had decreased slightly since 2017, the NAO still has difficulties understanding how 120 employees engaged jointly between two units are being efficiently deployed to tackle road-related works in Gozo.

The staff cost approximately €1.9 million per year in salaries and wages. 

Issues of overstaffing and lack of personnel expertise, as well as significant shortcomings in contractual safeguards, were all highlighted by the auditor general in the original 2017 report.

In its follow-up audit, the NAO found that staff had yet to be provided with adequate training courses, though it said the COVID-19 pandemic was partly to blame for this as planned training courses had to be put on hold.   

The auditor general was also less-than-pleased with the way ministry officials had communicated with NAO staff. 

Ministry staff had been criticised in the 2017 report for passing on information very late and in a piecemeal and inconsistent manner.  

In the follow-up report, the NAO said it had once again found it difficult to finalise its work, after information was either passed on late or not at all.  

Other audit follow-ups

The NAO also followed up on an audit into the regulatory function of the Office of the Commissioner for Voluntary Organisations, which it said was largely respected. 

Other audits on the Market Surveillance Directorate, Jobs Plus, and the Commerce Department, were also largely implemented.  

In a statement accompanying the report on the follow-up audits, the Auditor General said that two in three recommendations had been either fully implemented or very significant progress was made.

A quarter of the recommendations were partly implemented, with just under a tenth of the recommendations not implemented or showed little progress.

The full NAO follow-up report is available online.