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Karl Schembri
It is going to cost 50 per cent more than projected and it might be ready only after 11 years of protracted works, scrapped plans and hefty contracts.
But the Prime Minister still finds it fitting to announce in a ringing encomium that the Gozitans will get their much-postponed Mgarr Harbour next year.
In its belated realisation that it was losing ground among the Gozitan electorate on the eve of local elections, the Nationalist Party is now in full swing trying to give the message that it cares for the island of Ggantija, at times by banking on collective amnesia.
In fact, much as the government tries to hype it up, Lawrence Gonzi’s announcement is in fact a declaration that the project’s completion date is being postponed yet again, only a few weeks since his previous declaration that the Mgarr terminal had to be completed some time this year.
At least three other ministers followed their leader’s spin in the last weeks during Nationalist Party activities in Gozo. Deputy Prime Minister Tonio Borg, Competitiveness Minister Censu Galea and Gozo Minister Giovanna Debono have all patted each others’ backs on the impending completion of the terminal, some time next year.
What they fail to say is that the Cirkewwa-Mgarr terminals project was originally announced to cost Lm10 million and to be completed two years ago. Now government is saying it will cost Lm15 million, and according to Borg, the call for tenders for the completion of the Mgarr terminal has not even be made.
Government says it intends to “give a boost to the Mgarr Harbour project as from March” so that it is ready by next year. But judging by this decade-long odyssey, sceptics would be forgiven for not buying it.
The story goes back to 1995 when the project was first conceived as a way of consolidating the Cirkewwa terminal to reduce idle hours in windy weather, when otherwise the ferries would have to be diverted to Sa Maison.
Gozo Channel was reportedly losing more than 120 hours a year (called downtime periods) because of rough weather. Addressing this problem would have required a longer breakwater in Cirkewwa, but the project soon grew to include a car park, passenger terminals in Cirkewwa and Mgarr, separate ramps for passengers and vehicles, elevators, escalators, and other amenities.
With the change in government in 1996, all the project designs were entrusted to state-owned Coastal Management Company Limited (CMC) – which produced horrendous plans that would have ruined the Gozitan landscape with a monstrous three-storey block of offices surrounded by enormous glass windows occupying all the space at the foot of the Mgarr harbour.
At the time its design was described in the press as a ‘hot water bottle.’
Construction works were almost all contracted to Charles Polidano of Polidano Bros, after state-owned Kalaxlokk was discarded for unknown reasons. Polidano, also known as ic-Caqnu, had boasted that he won the tenders “as nobody had the balls to compete with me”.
Possibly, but it soon transpired that the construction of the breakwaters was harder than expected and costs kept increasing.
The project included installing ‘acropodes’ in the sea to act as wave breakers, and the building of an ‘earth-mound’ breakwater over reclaimed land to a level of 2.5 meters above sea level.
Contingency plans for the Mgarr terminal meant that by 2002, the project costs there rose to three times what originally projected, with the overall Cirkewwa-Mgarr project’s costs rising from Lm10 million in 1997 to Lm13 million.
Also, the Malta Maritime Authority realised it needed expert advice half-way through the project involving various areas of specialisation, as works in Cirkewwa put one of the best diving sites in Malta in serious jeopardy and violent storms in 2003 carried away great part of the breakwater extension.
“We felt that we had to manage the project ourselves and decide what had to be done,” Maritime Authority Chairman Marc Bonello had said back then. “It was clear that the design architects required assistance in certain areas of specialisation; we needed specialised consultants.”
He had also confessed to have convinced Minister Censu Galea to scrap the original terminal designs.
“I had to do a lot of lobbying with the minister to convince him that this is the way forward and in the end he recognised that there was an advantage in going for this changed design because in the long run people won’t remember the project just because it was ready on time, but because it was built in the wrong way,” Bonello said. “I couldn’t hand on heart keep spending all that money on a design which nobody wanted.”
So new designs were submitted to the Environment and Planning Authority after a Cabinet decision in 2002. The decision cost Lm100,000 in consultancy fees in a bid to get things right. CMC is owed Lm16,330 for architectural consultancy on buildings that will never materialise. Bezzina & Cole got a similar contract to produce more decent designs for Lm44,252, while CarlBro were appointed design consultants.
According to the maritime authority, the new extended breakwater in Cirkewwa will serve to drop downtime periods to around 24 hours per year as the ferry will be able to continue its service in rough weather.
The ferries will also be able to berth in the South quay instead of the North quay, minimising incidents which would otherwise force Gozo Channel to make an extra trip to Sa Maison.
Bonello had defended the decision back then, promising that the project would have been completed by this year.
“It would have been far easier for me to stick to the ‘hot-water bottle’ design and just say ‘that’s the plan’,” he said. “I’m convinced that what we’ll be giving is value for money. By 2005 we should be home and dry.”
Not quite. Last year, Minister Censu Galea gave an indication that new problems had cropped up when he announced in parliament that government was taking a decision on whether the project had to be “reduced”.
Even if it is, the costs are now higher as government announces that it will cost Lm15 million and new tenders will have to be issued for the Mgarr terminal.
It is also unclear whether the Cirkewwa works will be completed by next year, given that no statements have been made in this regard. Whatever the date of completion, Gozo Channel would then have to take over the operation of the terminals. Government intends to lease them to the state-owned ferry company, although this might not be in Gozo Channel’s commercial interest in the years to come.
karl@newsworksltd.com
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