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MALTATODAY 12 December 2021

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13 maltatoday | SUNDAY • 12 DECEMBER 2021 NEWS development. But at the time, they were un- aware back then that their land – on what is now Dun Salvatore Zarb Street – had been incor- rectly marked out by the Maltese Catholic Church as a church land to be transferred to the Joint Office, the entity register- ing Church lands handover over to the State under the 1993 con- cordat. Their field had bordered a Church-owned plot, but it was sucked up in the haphazard transfers of land to the Joint Office. Well after the error was realised, the Gharghur plot had been snatched up for the home ownership scheme, advertised and distributed for development. The Agiuses were powerless in the face of the expropriation. Yet they waited, for 26 whole years, for the government to publish the official notice in 2016 announcing they could petition for compensation for the land that had been taken for them. In 2016 they started legal pro- cedures to request what they insisted was their rightful claim: €970 per square metre – a total of €2 million – citing the updat- ed expropriation rules that set 2005 prices as the base property value. The Lands Authority refused, claiming this had been agricul- tural land valued at just €16,400. So started the Agiuses' court battle in the Land Arbitration Board. They argued that bid- ders for the Gharghur plots ad- vertised for Housing Authority were legally obliged to develop the land into terraced hous- es. Freehold redemptions were registered in January 1992, well before the official presidential declaration for expropriation, and planning applications were filed within that year for devel- opment. The land was already shown to be within the limits of the development zone of the Temporary Provision Scheme issued in 1988 The L.A.B. turned down the Lands Authority's claims that the property was agricultural at the time of expropriation – neither evidence, nor witnesses were presented to substantiate this claim. But it also disagreed with the Agiuses' claims for compensa- tion. Instead, the board's ex- perts halved their claim to €400 per square metre, citing previ- ous L.A.B. decisions – €791,000 for the field and an additional €86,000 for another part of the field which the Lands Authority failed to expropriate. The Agiuses remain scorned at the hefty haircut their com- pensation claim has taken, with three decades of delayed com- pensation to boot. "It is a damned system," a member of the family told Mal- taToday. "We suffered expropri- ation, lack of timely compensa- tion, delayed legal proceedings, and now, the government wants to refuse us the money a court of law has given us. It is hard to trust any administration or the system when citizens are treated this way." mvella@mediatoday.com.mt anger at expropriation that lasted three decades 11 plots on Dun S. Zarb Street in Gharghur were given to homeowners in 1991. But the landowners of the expropriated field are still fighting for their rightful claim "We suffered expropriation, lack of timely compensation, delayed legal proceedings, and now, the government wants to refuse us the money a court of law has given us. It is hard to trust any administration or the system when citizens are treated this way." This row of houses on Dun S. Zarb street was formerly a field that was sucked up in the transfer of Church lands to the State in the beginning of the 1990s. Only that it was not Church-owned. The houses were developed by 1992 soon after the plots were taken up by bidders for a Housing Authority home ownership scheme, well before the error became known. The original landowners were only able to apply for compensation in 2016, but the Lands Authority is insisting their compensation is radically trimmed to reflect the value of agricultural land at the time

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