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2 NEWS maltatoday | WEDNESDAY • 7 FEBRUARY 2024 2 KURT SANSONE ksansone@mediatoday.com.mt WOMEN who have miscart- tried should not be in the same hospital ward as expectant mothers, Labour MP Katya De Giovanni said, calling it "a cru- el" practice. De Giovanni called for great- er awareness on the trauma caused by miscarriage, recount- ing her experience 20 years ago as an expectant 29-year-old mother. "Miscarriage causes trauma to the women and men who ex- perience it and in my case, the trauma was so big that it led to the failure of my first marriage," De Giovanni told parliament on Monday in her adjournment speech. She called for better support for couples that suffer a mis- carriage, sharing details of her own traumatic experience on the evening between 3 and 4 December 2004. De Giovanni was 10 weeks pregnant at the time when she miscarried her first child. "I went to hospital because I started to bleed heavily and was in pain. The doctor on duty in- formed me that the child was lost and I required a D&C (a procedure to scrape the uterus clean)," she said, recalling the doctor's lack of compassion and sensitivity when delivering the news. De Giovanni said neither she nor her then husband was pre- pared for a miscarriage. "I spent a year, existing not living and no one could help me," she said. The Labour MP said she wanted to share her person- al experience in parliament to raise awareness on the suffer- ing caused by miscarriage. The country needs to do "much, much more" to address the trauma, she added. De Giovanni called for a stronger bereavement service provided by midwives and the need to speak about miscar- riage in pregnancy preparatory courses. She said marriage preparation courses should be extended to couples opting for a civil cer- emony and these should also touch on the subject of miscar- riage. De Giovanni said the topic should also feature in PSCD classes in schools and called for better training of professionals in the way they deliver the bad news. Cruel to leave women who miscarry in same ward as expectant mothers, Labour MP says Katya De Giovanni DEVELOPERS have "destroyed" prehistoric remains at the Sta Verna Temple area which was scheduled in 1932, NGO Flimk- ien għal Ambjent Aħjar has said. "Residents and FAA have been making reports about the bones being unearthed in the excava- tion works to build houses on the site, however in spite of clear photographic evidence, these re- ports were ignored and topsoil continued to be removed and dumped," the NGO said. The official archaeologists entrusted with monitoring the building site did not report the prehistoric remains, and as a result, findings were bulldozed without a trace, and the works caused the collapse of the roof of one of the caves. The NGO said a report by one of the Superintendence of Cultural Heritage (SCH) ar- chaeologists, Bernardette Mer- cieca-Spiteri, regaridng inves- tigations on the development area carried out in May and June 2023 –which describes a "burial pit" dating to the "tem- ple period" where seven skulls were found laid out in a row: "Some of the skulls were po- sitioned inside other broken skulls". "This has been inter- preted as an intentional and careful arrangement of human remains carried out in prehis- toric times" indicating ritual use of the site. This report indicating the presence of the remains was not transmitted to the Plan- ning Authority or the gener- al public and the SCH made no mention of the existence of prehistoric caves and pits touching the present building site, which were "found to be full of soil containing different human bones, animal bones and pottery sherds. In 2013 a planning applica- tion for re-zoning of the area in preparation for this large building project was approved, also based on erroneous re- porting that the area was not archaeologically rich. The latest application in the area is for a row of 11 residenc- es built over four floors by de- veloper Thomas Grech, a man- ager of PRA Construction Ltd, a company owned by Joseph Portelli and two of his Gozitan partners. Thomas Grech had also been the applicant for a block of 54 flats at Ta' Zej- ta being developed by Joseph Portelli and his partners. Flimkien għal Ambjent Aħjar (FAA) insists that it is essential to suspend all works until pro- fessional archaeological exca- vations are carried out and that a thorough inquiry should be carried out to investigate this cover-up. It is outrageous that "evidence for the earliest histo- ry of human occupation on the islands" should be destroyed in order to build yet more apart- ment blocks to enrich develop- ers and ruin Gozo. Developers 'bulldozed' prehistoric remains in Gozo, NGO claims KARL AZZOPARDI kazzopardi@mediatoday.com.mt The official archaeologists entrusted with monitoring the building site did not report the prehistoric remains, and as a result, findings were bulldozed without a trace, the NGO said Developers have "destroyed" prehistoric remains at the Sta Verna Temple area which was scheduled in 1932, NGO Flimkien għal Ambjent Aħjar says