Farmers' appeal to retain land goes unheeded

A number of farmers who have been tilling tracts of land adjacent to the Hal-Ferh holiday complex in Ghajn Tuffieha for over 30 years have three days to vacate the fields after their appeals to the government failed to convince the authorities of their cause.

The farmers were last August informed by Air Malta they had to vacate their fields by this month.

Apart from pressure in the media, early last month the farmers wrote to the Prime Minister, asking him to intervene, as well as to the Parliamentary Secretary for Agriculture, Frans Agius.

Aurelio Sammut, one of the part-time farmers involved, said they had "at least" received an acknowledgement from the Office of the Prime Minister but had been totally ignored by the parliamentary secretary.

"We have no guarantee that the Prime Minister read our letter but at least it was acknowledged. Not to receive an acknowledgement from the Parliamentary Secretary for Agriculture when the matter should be of concern to him is adding insult to injury," Mr Sammut said.

The farmers had been given the land by the government or other farmers who tilled it and who had also been given the land by the government. The farmers did not pay any lease and had been given the land under a precarium title, which means they had no rights over the land and could be told to move away at any time.

A spokesman for the Public Investments Ministry had explained that as Air Malta was divesting itself of three hotels, including the Hal-Ferh complex, all assets, including the land owned by it, will be transferred with the sale of the company.

The spokesman argued that the farmers had no title and vacating the properties was among the preparatory work being undertaken before they could be sold.

But the farmers felt that after tilling the land for so long, the government should leave their tracts of land, measuring some 30 tumoli, out of the deal when Hal-Ferh is eventually privatised.

Contacted yesterday, the Parliamentary Secretary for Agriculture said that from time to time his office received letters similar to that of the Ghajn Tuffieha farmers as farmers try to clutch at every straw.

"I recall we had sent a reply on the lines that the ministry could not go into the matter as there were other government ministries involved with the land in question.

"Farmers sometimes argue they have a right to till land because they have been doing so for a long time and because they would have registered it with the government's experimental farm at Ghammieri. That registration is only made for statistical and verification purposes," Dr Agius said.

Asked specifically about the land at Ghajn Tuffieha, Dr Agius said: "If our opinion is sought by other ministries, whenever land is tilled our wish is always that the land continues to be tilled".