Central Link Project consultancy given to Labour official by direct order

An architecture firm belonging to William Lewis, the Labour Party’s organising secretary, has been engaged to offer consultancy work on the Central Link Project by direct order, parliament’s environment committee heard on Monday.

The committee was discussing the controversial €55 million project that is intended to halve traffic in the Attard area.

Frederic Azzopardi, the new CEO of the government’s roads agency, was addressing a number of issues related to the project when he was asked by Nationalist MP Jason Azzopardi how long it was since work on the project had started.

Azzopardi said that work on the project’s cost-benefit analysis had been ongoing for at least a year and when asked by Jason Azzoapardi whether CrowdNet Limited, which belongs to Lewis, had been engaged through a direct order.

This was confirmed by Azzopardi, who clarified that the company had been engaged by Transport Malta, but not to carry out the cost-benefit analysis being discussed at the time. The value of the work done by CrowdNet on the project is not currently known.

The Nationalist MP insisted that it was outrageous for the company to not have been selected by tender.

According to the company’s website, it was founded in 2016 and mainly focused on transport and infrastructure studies and projects.

The website states that the company was involved in the Central Link Project from the start, including preliminary traffic studies, the collection of traffic data, observation studies and the analysis of data.