Flimkien ghal Ambjent Ahjar (FAA) has said that it “is easy for politicians to declare that “ODZ is ODZ” and promise to preserve our countryside when they know that much of it has already been handed over for development in the 2006 Rationalisation and Local Plans.”
FAA reports that this morning “MEPA’s Environment and Planning Commission had no choice but to approve the Outline Development Permit of a supermarket on agricultural land the Xewkija Valley, since this was designated as a development zone in the Local Plans, even though much of the Industrial Estate just across the road is empty and neglected. These changes to the Local Plans will also accommodate the Lidl supermarket which has also applied on agricultural land four sites away in the same valley.”
“In this way,” FAA continued, “knowledgeable developers who bought cheap ODZ land before August 2006 are now sitting on a goldmine, as fields and ridges all over Malta and Gozo are built up, accommodated by the Rationalisation and Local Plans. Although Gozo is one-tenth the size of Malta, it received 30% of the designations to transfer ODZ to developable land, just before the Eco-Gozo concept was announced.”FAA went on to highlight the fact “that the MEPA Board will tomorrow be reviewing an application to build 46 apartments and garages in a beautiful valley at Luqa. This valley full of protected carobs and dry stone walls was taken over as developable in the Rationalisation Plans. Facing the valley are rows of unsold new apartments. According to information supplied by MEPA, permits for hundreds of social housing units are presently being processed or built, while others are not yet occupied.”
FAA echoes the Developers’ Association in “calling for the purchase of available low-cost housing from existing excess stock rather than adding to the housing glut. Government officials are the first to admit that Government does not have the know-how to build as economically as experienced developers, as Minister John Dalli had declared publicly in the case of the Pembroke project. Why should we be wasting our taxes to destroy the countryside, when 76,000 units lie vacant? Such a solution makes sound economic sense, benefitting all sectors of our country including the financial sector which is struggling with an increased rate of defaulting loans, rather than destroying more of our countryside heritage and biodiversity.”
www.faa.org.mt [1]
2 Comments To "MEPA review housing PA in spite of 76000 empty units"
#1 Comment By Carmel Camilleri On October 13, 2011 @ 10:28 am
Gozo is one-third the size of Malta not one-tenth !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
#2 Comment By James A. Tyrrell On October 13, 2011 @ 12:21 pm
The questions that needs to be asked here is who are the developers that bought up all this cheap ODZ land before August 2006? What was their reason for buying the land if it was designated as ODZ? Did they perhaps know something that no-one else did? And lastly, once the developers have been identified exactly what relationship is there between them and the present Government? God forbid that anyone should suggest that in this lovely island of Malta corrupt practices are taking place but sometimes you have to accept that if it looks like a duck, walks like a duck and quacks like a duck there is a very good chance that it just might be a duck!