Alternattiva Demokratika has said that for two whole years and 3 DCC Hearings, Otters ASC attempted through PA 01894/07 to excavate a 375 square meter hole along the whole width of the foreshore in Marsalforn for a sea water pool and to occupy other public areas for peripheral services, to construct a gym, stores, pump room and administration buildings extending their private site by another 30 meters. Marsalforn residents were never informed that 597 meters of public foreshore and another 234 meters of an existing building had already been ceded to this club in 2005 by a parliamentary deed.

"Yet again, Alternattiva Demokratika was the only party which had immediately declared its support for the Marsalforn residents objecting to this application and had organised a protest meeting near site on the 16th of December 2007. As a registered objector AD sent its representatives to all these Hearings."

"The latest DCC Hearing was held on the 20th of April 2010 and grieved Marsalforn residents requested Architect Mr Carmel Cacopardo to attend and assist them in objecting this application. During this Hearing Mr Cacopardo expounded how this application runs counter to various Structure Plan Policies within the Gozo and Comino Local Plan, such as, that this area should remain undeveloped and open, that no studies based on demographic projections were ever conducted if ever any new sport facility extension in this area was to be considered, that public access to foreshore is to be safeguarded and that this area is a designated as an Area of High Landscape sensitivity."

AD said that after Mr Cacopardo’s presentation in the defence of this foreshore, the DCC Board judiciously voted unanimously for the refusal of the encroachment of this public foreshore. AD recognises and appreciates the wise decision of the DCC Board.

AD’s spoksperson for Gozo, Victor Galea, urged the PN government to implement his promise of 1991 to give the Gozitans a public swimming pool as is the case in Malta. "As Alternattiva Demokratika has been saying all along, if Malta already has two such national pools, then Gozo deserves one. We must not continue to be treated unequally. Given the socio-educational advantages of aquatic sports in Gozo, I sincerely hope that in the-not-so-distant future the sport finds itself on the national agenda and not used as a favourite subject for ‘lip-service’ exercises that seem to have become somewhat of a national pastime. Stop taking away more public land and give Gozitans what is theirs by right. We are fed up of empty promises. Let us hope that satisfactory action will be taken well before the eve of next election."

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