Ian Borg, Minister for Transport, Infrastructure and Capital Projects has a thing for TV and reporters’ cameras. He calls a press conference every alternate day to inaugurate some project or other. He has become a TV figure wearing the famous bright yellow vest and hard hat. I will watch out for his safety shoes next time. His motto ‘getting things done’ has to be proved, no? So we see him regularly updating us of how he is turning Malta into one big grey road. Quite a few people say he resembles a young Lorry Sant, a TDH (tall, dark and handsome).
Alas, most of the projects he inaugurates are either half-baked or with works still ongoing. Take the 800 metre Saint Anthony Street in Qala, Gozo. It was inaugurated incomplete by the Prime Minister. A few days later a half-hour of heavy rain damaged the road so works had to be done again. Please note that this road cost €2 million to build. Getting things done, improperly.
His famous Marsa flyover project saw him there regularly. First when he had a ceremony of the first flyover ready: the one with the ‘it is not a hole, it’s an expansion joint’. Then he called the press again for the opening of the third flyover and yet another one when all the flyovers were opened to cars. Yet, if you pass from Marsa, the place still looks like a building site, with mountains of rubble, cones, flashing lights and confusion. Completion is months away. And that would be another PR occasion for Robert Abela and Ian Borg. The famous Kappara flyover, opened more than three years ago is still unfinished, with works still going on near the entrance junction to Kappara itself. It’s a bit like Schubert’s symphony.
The Santa Luċija tunnel was inaugurated weeks ago although it is still ‘works in progress’ with drivers driven nuts by daily traffic jams as either direction on the road takes turns to close. The road is as bumpy as a children’s castle.
Another public relations event: the one when Ian Borg ‘unveiled’ a bridge built by Infrastructure Malta on the way to the airport. The bridge which starts in fields and crosses to other fields. At least this time they didn’t create and broadcast a video saying: ‘We built a bridge.’
Ian Borg, known for his obsession with cutting down trees and destroying anything green or shades of, has lately ‘visited’ the green wall he is building in Marsa. A wall full of planters (costing the tax-payer €600 per square metre) was given prominence on TVM which said that this was the first of its kind in Malta. Though Borg ‘visited’ the wall a couple of weeks ago, it is still causing huge traffic jams during rush hour as workers continue to place plants in the pots. Does this mean that every time he visits we’re going to see him on the news?
Paola Square took more than two years to be completed, costing millions. Not much changed. Ian Borg chopped off mature trees and planted small saplings, changed a one way stretch of road to a dual carriageway so that the road in front of the Labour Party Club became pedestrianised allowing his party club to cash in on outside chairs and tables. The club also took over a piece of land where years ago a block of flats was blown by the owner for insurance money and cost the life of a mother and her child. Does the club actually belong to the Labour Party or is it another requisitioned property whose owners are paid peanuts? Passing through the square makes one seasick. The tiling gave way and the local council architect said that there was nearly €300,000 worth of damages needing repair. Getting things done, faultily.
Ian Borg spent a million euro to do some face lifting of the small square in front of St Luke Hospital, now belonging to Stewart Health Care. Could be a favour to Stewart Health Care to make people think that St Luke Hospital is being refurbished. It is not. Again more paving and a newly built latrine instead of the old underground one. Money down the drain. But some friend of friends got the tender and made hundreds of thousands overnight – well not overnight as although inaugurated, works are still ongoing.
The lumberjack made very old trees disappear from the Attard and Rabat areas for his famous Central Link because Ian Borg prefers grey concrete to anything green. A friend of mine living in Attard told me he now has to go to Rabat to proceed to Żebbuġ because the road which connected Attard to Żebbuġ is no longer accessible.
His latest project is the fixing of major tunnels. At first, he said that they needed maintenance and structural works. But now we came to know that they are in a very good state. All he has to do is some lighting, paint the walls and install a few cats’ eyes. Some are placing bets on what the two rooms being built at the North entrance of the Santa Venera tunnels are for. Perhaps a couple of toilets?
Ian Borg filled Malta with billboards saying that the works being done by Infrastructure Malta will save hundreds of hours in traffic; that you will get you to your destination faster and millions will be saved on fuel. Rubbish. The hours stuck in traffic got longer and driving slower in a low gear will consume more fuel.
Should Ian Borg be believed? I very much doubt it. Not even the Courts of Justice believed him. In a libel case he instituted against The Malta Independent, the Court has found testimony delivered ‘hard to believe’. Ian Borg bought a nearly 700 square-metre plot for a miserable €10,000 from a man who was suffering from mental illness. The Court said that Ian Borg’s testimony was not credible. So to make it easier to understand, did Ian Borg perjure himself? He never even gave a thought to resigning. Ma tarax. Robert Abela is four-square behind him because he needs his talents. Resign? How can he? Who will ‘get things done then?
Franz Schubert’s Symphony No. 8 in B minor is commonly known as the Unfinished Symphony. Schubert started composing it in 1822 but it was left with only two completed movements and with fragments of another two movements. Schubert died six years later. The Unfinished Symphony is a scherzo, nearly completed in a piano score but unfortunately only two orchestrated papers survived.