Infrastructure Malta has built more than roads but also a reputation for having a dubious relationship with the rules.
Jessica Arena looks at the evidence.
When Infrastructure Malta swooped down recently on a quiet residential road in Żebbuġ and started to widen it, the action raised the ire of residents, as well as environmentalists, who held that the works breached all road policies.
This reaction was hardly a first for the government agency that oversees construction projects.
Since its founding in the summer of 2018, IM has prided itself on getting things done. But the way it steamrolls ahead with some of its projects has drawn heavy criticism, particularly on environmental grounds.
The widening of a residential road in Żebbuġ last week went against all road policies and Infrastructure Malta should have consulted with the Planning Authority beforehand, environmentalists are insisting.
On Wednesday, IM workers, escorted by the police, descended on Triq il-Fraxxnu to clear part of a fruit garden to widen the road. Residents and the local council said they were unaware of the impending works, with independent councillor Steve Zammit Lupi sitting on a wall in the path of excavators to highlight his opposition.
IM said the works on the 70-metre road “which had never been completely formed to its actual width” did not require a planning permit and it had obtained approval from the Transport Authority.
An internal Enemalta audit into the Montenegro wind farm scandal has found due diligence omissions and a lack of professional scepticism by Enemalta’s board about the deal.
Times of Malta and
Reuters last year exposed how 17 Black owner and murder suspect Yorgen Fenech walked away from the deal with a €4.6 million profit after secretly financing an intermediary used to sell the wind farm project shares to Enemalta.
The intermediary, Cifidex, was owned by Turab Musayev, who was on the Electrogas consortium board along with Fenech.
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Musayev has denied any wrongdoing.
The audit report recommended Enemalta should draw up policies about how the company goes about investing in new projects or existing ones, including safeguards against money laundering attempts on the part of potential business partners.
Graffitti hits out at Ian Borg, says roads agency failed to give details of Mrieħel bypass project
Moviment Graffitti takes umbrage at Infrastructure Minister Ian Borg s claim that people opposing a proposed project on the Mrieħel bypass were misinformed in their criticism
21 December 2020, 5:57pm
by Karl Azzopardi
Moviment Graffitti has hit out at comments made by Infrastructure Minister Ian Borg over criticism levelled at proposed plans to create a new junction on the Mrieħel bypass that will take up agricultural land.
Borg accused farmers and environmental activists of being misinformed over the project, which seeks to create a new flyover that will facilitate access to the Mrieħel industrial estate for northbound traffic.
Updated 4pm with PN statement
Plans to expand the Mrieħel bypass with a new flyover are being quietly moved forward by Infrastructure Malta, Moviment Graffitti said on Saturday, in what it described as the roads agency s standard way of operating.
The proposed expansion will take up more than three football pitches worth of agricultural land – 20 tumoli - which is outside the development zone and forever destroy farming in the area , Graffitti warned.
It will also require authorities to destroy a €1 million pedestrian footbridge built and installed above the bypass just two years ago, according to plans which the NGO showed