Issue link: https://maltatoday.uberflip.com/i/1315450
16 maltatoday | SUNDAY • 6 DECEMBER 2020 NEWS Adapt for the future. Angele felt it was time for her business to get support to help give it a boost. So she contacted the local Enterprise Europe Network to explore all the opportunities available to SMEs in the EU. The Enterprise Europe Network helped her find the right support. Find out how the Enterprise Europe Network can support your business : enterprise-europemalta.com Angele Giuliano Managing Director, AcrossLimits Ltd. Looking to develop your business in a changing world ? PAUL COCKS WORKS on a €32 million disa- bility hub project in Naxxar have been at a standstill for at least 12 months, with work grinding to a halt in 2020, and an excavation site left untouched for months. The hub, renamed Reach, is being built next to the former Trade Fair grounds and will consist of four fully detached blocks for 78 semi-independ- ent living residential units, a 26-room hostel, a community building, restaurant and retail outlets, a therapy centre with pool, gym and an underground car park. The community hub is in- tended for persons with a dis- ability living on or visiting the site. The project was given the green light by the Planning Authority in December 2017, with excavation work starting in 2019, but then soon came to a stop. Mounds of inert waste were left on site since then, much to the dismay and con- cern of neighbouring residents. No work was carried out on the site throughout 2020, despite construction work not falling under restrictions imposed to curb the spread of COVID-19. Questions previously sent to former parliamentary secretary for disability Silvio Parnis went unanswered for weeks. But Naxxar mayor Anne Ma- rie Muscat Fenech Adami told MaltaToday that the council too was concerned about the lack of progress on the site. "Unfortunately, the council keeps asking what is going on, but no answers are forthcom- ing," she said. "We've had no contact whatsoever and are sty- mied as to why work seems to have stopped." It is unclear if the excavation work has been completed and if the work falls under a separate tender. No explanation has also been given as to why mounds of inert waste have been left on site for months. The project goes back to 2016, when Justyne Caruana was par- liamentary secretary responsi- ble for the sector at the time. In 2017 objectors had argued that the proposed development would make an already bad traf- fic problem even worse and that the project was not fit for the area. The Commission for the Rights of Persons with Disabil- ity had opposed the project in 2016, and had even mentioned its objections in its four-year report presented to the Unit- ed Nations in criticism of the government's implementation of the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabil- ity. Critics argued that the concept of a hub for disabled persons would distance them from the rest of the community, going di- rectly against provisions of the Equal Opportunities (Persons and Disability) Act and CRPD guidelines which recommend that persons with disability "not be physically segregated." Standstill in Naxxar