Residents still waiting for surfacing of St Julian’s road
The situation at Triq Sir Joseph Carbone in St Julian’s has become impossible for us residents. The road was made accessible to vehicles as from 2002. This was only made possible due to the completion of residential blocks in the mentioned road; since the road was blocked access from both sides (i.e with use of cement blocks and a gate) by a family who still live along this road.
Due to the above situation, the road was overseen by roads department when they were resurfacing Birkirkara Hill on a couple of occasions.
According to the person that developed the residential project, it was agreed with the local mayor, besides many other things, that road will surfaced as soon as gate would have been removed! When contacted by myself over the past years, the mayor Peter Bonello was far from helpful on many occasions (such as the plaque for the street name, and street light). His answers were along these lines: (i) our particular road was out of the hands of the local council; (ii) it would be surfaced within the year (2008); (ii) after that it was ‘no funds from the government’, and that we can form a consortium to surface the road from private funds until government finds the money to surface a road of less than 40m long!
I also have been asking the council to come remove grass and bamboo trees along the side of the road. It took eight months and 15 phone calls for Mr Bonello, to send somebody to cut the grass and bamboo. The bamboo has not been cut yet and has reached lengths of 15 feet plus.
The road has become ground zero; trash everywhere, dog poo along the whole road and on the pavement, and there are at least three huge potholes you have to drive around. It’s suicide to try and drive over them, not to mention what happens to our road when forces of nature such as wind and rain happen to pass by. The amount of dust and mud we bear with is unacceptable, as is of serious damage to our health and a general hygiene nuisance. It’s like a third world country and not a country that is part of the EU – it’s more like a bad day in Afghanistan.
When contacting the Transport Ministry, ADT, Roads Dept, or whatever.... the only answer was that the road is top priority and will be surfaced when funds are available. This has been going on for the last three to four years. I even spoke Perit Daniel Cordina who is in charge of the area by the roads dept., and was guaranteed at least an initial surfacing to level off the road, but no such thing ever materialised... and this was about a year ago.
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