The Planning Authority will not be taking further action in the case of about 120 foreigners found living inside a cow farm that has now been sealed off.

A spokesman for the planning watchdog told the Times of Malta on Thursday that while enforcement officers would continue monitoring the site “no further action” was required.

The premises, he pointed out, had been “sealed off”.

The regulator ordered the group of immigrants to pack up and leave the farm in the limits of Qormi on Monday after it emerged that they were living there illegally in conditions PA official Charles Gafa described as “appalling”.

The immigrants, the majority of whom came to Malta from Italy, had been living in cow stalls subdivided into partitions and crammed with several beds.

Still, the majority of those who made the cow farm their home insisted with the police that they were not living in inhumane conditions. Some of them even told this newspaper they were happy living at the Qormi farm because it was better than ending up homeless.

On being told to leave, most of the immigrants lamented they had nowhere to go and a good number of them were forced to sleep outside in fields in the area close by.

Questions sent to the Office of the Prime Minister on how the government was planning to deal with such a reality and whether any assistance has been offered to the group of immigrants with no roof over their heads were not answered by the time of writing.

The Planning Authority has sealed off the farm that illegally housed foreigners.

Police sources told Times of Malta earlier this week that, since the immigrants were unlikely to testify, it was likely nobody would be prosecuted.

Asked whether any reports of similar inhumane conditions had been reported since the news broke earlier this week, the PA spokesman said no such complaints had been received.