AD protests against planned green-area supermarket

Alternattiva Demokratika yesterday drew attention to another case in which it claimed the Malta Environment and Planning Authority has "lost all sense of logic, direction and credibility".

At a press conference in front of the newly built St Benedict College in Kirkop, limits of Safi, against a backdrop of tonnes of soil recently excavated to make way for yet another supermarket, AD deputy chairman Stephen Cachia slammed the recent go-ahead given to this development.

He claimed it constituted another series of irregularities.

AD was seriously preoccupied about the fact that Mepa was "more in favour of development than the environment and planning authority it claims to be", Mr Cachia said.

Carmel Cacopardo, former deputy general secretary of the Nationalist Party, commented on the fact that the planning directorate within Mepa had submitted a recommendation to refuse the application.

Besides this, Mr Cacopardo said, even the Department of Agriculture had objected to the development in a letter dated October 27, 2006. The local plan identified the land in question as agricultural in nature.

"As usual, the relative Development Control Commission overturned the recommendations, without any valid reason. Ironically, its go-ahead was based on the fact it would not undermine the agricultural policy, it would not cause any traffic problems and that it is essential for the local community."

Mr Cacopardo queried the use of a local plan if its policies were ignored where it really mattered.

"No one blames anybody for suspecting that this is yet another result of the affinity between politics and the construction industry. With such decisions, the local plans become a smokescreen," he said.

Saviour Sammut, AD's spokesman for the south of Malta, said the land earmarked for development forms part of a landscape that the Safi local council pledged to turn into a Belveder, overlooking a picturesque view of tilled, ploughed and farmed fields and other distant views of parts of Malta.

Mr Sammut asked whether the local council would still do what it had pledged and questioned what sense it would make to have people sitting on benches overlooking truckloads of merchandise and groceries stocking the supermarket.

He said the DCC's reasons are all conveniently in favour of the developer and that Mepa cannot be believed for maintaining that the land that was still tilled and farmed until the development started was not of any agricultural value.

"The category of this development is Outside Scheme. If the DCC wants to be taken seriously it should have upheld the recommendations and refused outright this development in a green area, which serves as a buffer zone/green belt between the two villages of Safi and Kirkop.

"Now, it will serve as an excuse for construction activity to put a foothold in this area of fields and further develop it into yet another urban sprawl."