Skidding on Ramla Road

This morning (Friday) a gentleman called on my mobile panic stricken asking me to meet him at Ramla Road , Nadur, Gozo. I was at a ceremony in Xaghra at the time but the way he was talking compelled me to leave everything and go to see what happened.

I met the gentleman midway down the slope of the newly surfaced road. Bubbling he told me: ‘Look, tell me what do you see?’. I looked and I saw a lot of tyre marks as if we were at some car racing track with tyre marks swerving and going all directions. At first I thought that this man would complain that this road was being used for car racing but alas no.

That same morning we had some rain, no torrents, just a little shower. His wife was taking the children for a swim at Ramla, when all of a sudden the car could not hold because the road became very slippery. In a matter of a few minutes several cars were skidding on the slippery surface and a chaos ensued.

The gentleman showed me the surface of the road and it was like a yellowish substance had oozed out of the tarmac and rendered the surface extremely slippery and dangerous.

I was really flabbergasted because this is a new road costed the Gozitan people hundreds of thousands of pounds. I am no expert but it is not normal to have that yellowish material oozing out rendering a newly built road so dangerous. The competent authorities should assume responsibility to enquire if the works in the road were carried out according to standards and test the tarmac used. We cannot afford having expensive roads poorly constructed constituting such a danger to the citizen.