Gżira’s local council has filed two separate lawsuits in a bid to overturn a planning decision to replace a section of public garden on the Gżira strand with a fuel station.
Mayor Conrad Borg Manché said that the council was suing after it learned that the man who turned down its appeal against the Planning Authority decision was employed by the PA itself.
Joseph Borg, who heads the Environment and Planning Review Tribunal, turned down the council’s appeal against the project in June 2020, in a decision that had left Borg Manché’ “immensely disappointed” and activists livid.
The project is to relocate a fuel station currently close to Manoel Island bridge further down the road and into part of Ġnien Il-Kunsill tal-Ewropa, with the PA approving the project to allow for the road to be widened.
Relocating the fuel station would lead to two oak trees and one olive tree being uprooted, with the fuel station’s footprint increasing from 287m2 to 930m2.
Months after the EPRT decision, Times of Malta had revealed that the board’s chair Joseph Borg was a PA employee on unpaid leave, despite the board being an ostensibly “independent and impartial” one tasked with reviewing PA decisions.
Borg’s predecessor as EPRT chair, Martin Saliba, had a similar arrangement in place.
Gżira mayor Borg Manché said that the revelation was at the basis of the council’s fresh legal bid to have the fuel station project stopped, with the council seeking a retrial of the appeal on the basis of Borg’s apparent conflict of interest.
The council was also filing a lawsuit contesting the legality of the EPRT decision, with the mayor saying it was “requesting the courts to rule on the legality of such proceedings where a tribunal which is supposed to be independent and impartial is chaired by the employee of one of the parties to the appeal.”
"It is unjust that the public has to bear the burden of commercialization of every corner when the law should have been followed and a more appropriate spot found. We do not give lip service to the concept of the wellbeing of our citizens but we fight for it by all legal means necessary,” Borg Manché said.
Gżira residents who oppose the fuel station plans can sign a petition to voice their support for the council position. Details about the petition are available by emailing gzira.lc@gov.mt or by calling 2134 1034.