Works are underway to fill a gaping hole below part of the Sliema promenade following concerns the area could collapse.
Photos taken this week show concrete blocks piled up in front of wooden boards covering the entrance to the cave-like area beneath the popular walkway.
The work comes more than a year after Sliema mayor John Pillow said immediate action was needed to “avoid tragedy” after part of the concrete wall at the base of the promenade “fell into the sea”.
Contacted this week, he said the works were being undertaken by the public works department and were expected to be completed by the end of the week.
Stressing the hole beneath was “not a cave” but an area left vacant after part of the retaining wall collapsed, Pillow said the works were “finally being carried out” after flagging the issue last year.
“I was right; it could have been a danger,” he said.
Posting to Facebook last April, Pillow said fissures extending three metres inland had appeared in the rock and could prove fatal in instances of strong winds.
But while the Sliema mayor maintains the area was in need of urgent attention, civil engineers and University of Malta lecturers Adrian Mifsud and Christian Schembri told Times of Malta in May the area was in no “immediate” risk of collapse.
However, while saying the promenade was in “no imminent danger,” they acknowledged that “doesn’t mean there won’t be with time”.
Questions were sent to the public works ministry.