MaltaToday previous editions

MALTATODAY 15 August 2021

Issue link: https://maltatoday.uberflip.com/i/1401709

Contents of this Issue

Navigation

Page 17 of 47

2 maltatoday EXECUTIVE EDITOR Matthew Vella mvella@mediatoday.com.mt Letters to the Editor, MaltaToday, Vjal ir-Rihan, San Gwann SGN 9016 E-mail: dailynews@mediatoday.com.mt Letters must be concise, no pen names accepted, include full name and address maltatoday | SUNDAY • 15 AUGUST 2021 Overdevelopment: the elephant in the room Editorial EARLIER this week, the urban greening agency Green- serv announced it will convert an abandoned field, by one of the Mosta windmills, into a new public garden. Derelict, overgrown and full of trees, the area is known simply as Ċikku Fenech's field, having been once tended to by the once notorious fugitive-mur- derer. It is roughly the size of a football pitch, and al- though uncultivated and abandoned, serves as a green lung, with various olive and cypress trees, in an already densely-developed part of Malta. The €4.5 million project – which will "complement the current field with trees, natural passageways, and limestone" – is financed by the National Development and Social Fund (NDSF), the national passport sale fund, and administered by GreenServ. So far, so good. On paper, this announcement does indeed seem a welcome departure, from the script that we have all become more accustomed to in recent years. At a time when the news cycle is so often dominated by the very opposite scenario – i.e., green spaces be- ing earmarked for development, instead of the other way around – one can only hope that the Maltese gov- ernment has finally understood that there is a limit to how much over-development this island can actually sustain. Separately, the importance of green spaces was also given prominence in the conclusions reached by Mal- ta's National Post-Pandemic Strategy Steering Com- mittee, when presenting its post-COVID roadmap at the end of June. The committee, led by Prof. Simone Borg, said the pandemic had brought the importance of health and wellbeing "into sharp relief" and recognised the vital role of pleasant urban and natural settings. "Recognising the vital role a pleasant urban and nat- ural environment plays in health, happiness and the quality of our tourism offering, we will adopt a more cohesive, sustainable and forward-looking approach to planning and development – enhancing our towns and cultural heritage, preserving and creating public green spaces, and enhancing infrastructure to make cycling and walking safe and enjoyable," the commit- tee concluded. From this perspective, the Mosta garden is certainly one of many attempts to make good on that promise. If so, however, the same project may also have inad- vertently exposed the utmost limits of the same gov- ernment's national 'greening' strategy. For there is a very unwelcome flipside to all this, from the point of view of the residents of surrounding Mo- sta neighbourhoods. Although they will be undenia- bly gaining a new, public 'green space' – or at least, a refurbishment of a 'garden' that technically already exists – this will come at the expense of two massive urban development projects in the close vicinity. A sprawling piece of agricultural land of 40,000sq.m that separates Mosta from the Durumblat Road in Attard, known as tad-Dib, is targeted for a massive development project by a group of landholders in the area. Another adjacent area, known as Ta' Mellu, is also being zoned for 17.5m-high development across 36,000sq.m of agricultural land. Both these areas had been included in development boundaries back in 2006, when the Nationalist admin- istration of the time extended the building zones by 16.6%, in one of the most controversial actions ever taken by the Gonzi administration. Admittedly, all three of these projects are unrelated to each other; and in any case, by its own admission, government is powerless to reverse the mistakes made in 2006. Yet – when viewed as a correlative for overdevelop- ment as a whole – the fate of this small corner of Malta may also be indicative of a wider, more insidious prob- lem. It appears to be yet another case where residents are being 'short-changed' – in this case, gaining a de- served token of compensation, for the loss of a much larger tract of land. Mosta residents – like all Maltese citizens, every- where – will surely notice that the 'status quo' retained by the Labour administration on development zones (even enabling further development in rural areas) happens to be very convenient: both for the develop- ment lobby itself, and also for political parties that de- pend on it for their own financing. Applied to this particular scenario, that may even seem like an unfair conclusion to reach. But when you consider that the present administration has presided over the single largest development drive this country has ever seen, whilst also dragging its feet on its own promises of planning reform… it is hard to shake off the notion that a public garden in Mosta, much need- ed though it is, is at the end of the day a bit of eye-can- dy in a village that is facing a massive development onslaught. This is not a criticism of the government's drive for urban greening. Indeed, it should be earmarking more private tracts of land that can become gigantic urban parks, allowing for greater mobility from dis- tant points in villages without the need for cars. But it would be remiss of this newspaper not to point out the elephant in the room… our national failure to ever properly address public concerns about rampant over- development; and to rein in, once and for all, the greed that is ruining so much of this country's quality of life. 14 August 2011 Not all bus drivers asking for identifica- tion, Arriva admits ARRIVA bus drivers are not consistently asking commuters to present identification when buying discounted bus fares available only to Maltese residents, the company has admitted. The reasons for this, Arriva told MaltaTo- day, is because some drivers recognise those who live close to them and don't ask, while other drivers avoid asking to speed up the boarding process. MaltaToday was investigating claims by several commuters that bus drivers were acting solely on their own discretion when asking commuters to present identification proving them to be Maltese residents. The commuters complained that while Maltese-looking commuters would board buses and purchase resident discount bus fares without being asked to present identi- fication, foreign-looking individuals would unfailingly be requested to present identifi- cation. MaltaToday also received complaints of foreign-looking Maltese residents being auto- matically charged the standard full fare price without being asked if they wanted to pur- chase a discounted ticket, or with any proof of residence being requested. The commuter did not object at the time because she said she was not aware that a dis- counted fare price was available to residents. Asked by MaltaToday to answer to these claims, Arriva spokesperson Kate Griffin conceded that an "initial investigation" found that "not everyone who purchases a ticket is currently being asked." She said that "the reasons include that some drivers may recognise those who live close to them and therefore don't ask them to produce their valid photo identification card issued by the government of Malta." She added that "other drivers, when faced with many people boarding at once, aren't always checking identification so as not to hold the boarding process up." ... Quote of the Week "I was a work-martyr for our book industry which literally needed saving and we ended up increasing sales and revenues for the industry substantially." The long-serving executive chairman of the National Book Council, Mark Camilleri, after not being granted another contract for his post MaltaToday 10 years ago

Articles in this issue

Links on this page

Archives of this issue

view archives of MaltaToday previous editions - MALTATODAY 15 August 2021