Infrastructure Minister Ian Borg has hit back at critics of the pomp with which the Marsa Junction road works project was inaugurated, arguing that similar events during Nationalist administrations cost a lot more.

In a Facebook post on Monday, Borg said that the ceremony for the €70 million Marsa Junction project, held earlier this month, cost taxpayers €45,480.

He said that was less than one-third the €141,771 spent to inaugurate the €1.2 million renovation of St George’s Square in Valletta in 2009 and half the €80,123 spent to inaugurate a new €10 million bus terminus outside the capital in July 2011. Both those projects were inaugurated by a Nationalist government.  

“There’s a lot to be said about spending on inaugurations,” the Labour minister said in a Facebook post.

But the minister failed to mention that taxpayers have paid for two separate inauguration projects for the Marsa project – one on April 15 at the end of the project, and one in September 2020 to mark the opening of its first two flyovers. 

That means inauguration costs for the Marsa Junction project top €85,000, spread across the two events. 

The Marsa Junction Project million infrastructure project saw workers build seven flyovers in the area, replacing traffic light junctions in the area and allowing traffic to Malta’s southern localities to flow uninhibited. 

It was inaugurated on April 15 by Prime Minister Robert Abela, accompanied by Borg, junior minister for EU funds Stefan Zrinzo Azzopardi and Infrastructure Malta CEO Fredrick Azzopardi, in a televised event.  

Borg had already had the pleasure of celebrating the project 19 months prior. 

On September 20, 2020, Borg accompanied then-Prime Minister Joseph Muscat in another €40,000 taxpayer-funded event to officially inaugurate the first two of the project’s seven flyovers. 

“This is a historic day for the country,” Borg had said on that occasion. The minister made no reference to that ceremony in his Monday post. 

Sign up to our free newsletters

Get the best updates straight to your inbox:
Please select at least one mailing list.

You can unsubscribe at any time by clicking the link in the footer of our emails. We use Mailchimp as our marketing platform. By subscribing, you acknowledge that your information will be transferred to Mailchimp for processing.