Now that the government has embarked on a nationwide pro-ject of road resurfacing, one could be forgiven for assuming that local councils have been relieved of their responsibility for the maintenance of secondary roads and relieved also of a substantial part of their annual financial allocation.

Given the state of several roads in St Paul’s Bay, one can only draw this conclusion.

Driving through such roads as Il-Majjiera, Il-Bekkum, L-Imħar and others poses a real threat of damage to vehicles. Due to the continuous battering of the roads by heavy construction equipment – cranes, mega truckloads of bricks and beams of pre-stressed concrete – aggravated by the rains of the last months, cracks have developed into wide furrows running from one side of the road to the other and small potholes have grown into sizeable craters even 30 centimetres deep.

I should think that those who have already suffered damage to their cars because of this disgraceful lack of maintenance will ask their local council to make good for the expenses incurred. Councils will, in turn, be justified in asking all developers to foot the bill.

Seeing that some villages with a population of less than 3,000 have the luxury of a local council it is only reasonable to hope that one having over 25,000 residents plus a load of problems created by the thousands of tourists visiting it every year (in summer the population of St Paul’s Bay shoots up to 50,000) will be much better served by two councils. Qawra and Buġibba cry out loud for this long-overdue split.

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