That unpolished jewel

The feature by George Cini, "Fort St Angelo succumbing to modern-day ravages" (September 10), which echoes a spate of other reports in The Times over the last few months, is indeed very distressing, particularly when one recollects that the battle for the preservation of Fort St Angelo had already been fought and won some years back by the then National Tourism Organisation of Malta (NTOM).

Way back in 1996, when NTOM had successfully opened a number of forts to the public, it set its eyes on the jewel in the crown of our system of fortifications, Fort St Angelo. After surmounting not unsubstantial obstacles raised by offficialdom, NTOM finally acquired the keys to that part of the fort which is not occupied by the Knights of St John. It quickly embarked upon a programme of cleaning up the fort from the ravages of time and vandalism.

With the help of an energetic team of beach cleaners made available by the then Parliamentary Secretary for Tourism Joe Psaila Savona, who backed NTOM's project to the hilt, the fort was given a thorough spring cleaning. Truck-loads of rubbish, dry grass, abandoned rusty equipment, cables and debris were carted out of the fort. Lawns were mowed, trees pruned. Dangerous areas were fenced off and the unsightly latter-day additions to the fort which had been broken into and were being used for all sorts of unsavoury practices were boarded up and the boarding covered by banners displaying the colours of the Order of St John.

The help of the Armed Forces of Malta, under Brigadier Rupert Montanaro, was also forthcoming and soldiers from C Company, 1st Regiment, abseiled from the sheer bastions uprooting vegetation that had grown out of cracks in the walls and restoring them to their pristine state. The events division of NTOM, under director Pio Spiteri and manager Gerald Miller, then got the "beach cleaners" to clear one of the huge underground magazines from tonnes upon tonnes of debris and to restore the place in time for a concert to be held in there in due course.

Direction signs were set up all along the main roads leading to the fort using the newly discovered "brown" colour code indicating places of historical interest and the fort itself saw notice boards posted up, giving a brief history of the fort and explaining the historical significance of different parts of the fort itself.

A brochure with a plan of the fort and an explanatory legend was printed and a team of re-enactors from the locality was recruited to man the fort on Saturdays when it was open to the viewing public. Old cannon were also brought over from Fort Mosta and mounted in some of the embrasures along the bastions and curtain walls. All this from NTOM's limited product development budget and with a great deal of dedication from NTOM and Ministry of Tourism staff.

After months of hard work, all was ready for the opening of the fort on the occasion of the first Birgu Festival and during the festival weekend thousands visited the fort watching the spectacular re-enactments by the NTOM's In Guardia re-enactors and admiring the clean and presentable state of the fort and the fjakkolata which lined the bastions after sunset .

Naturally, all this came at a cost to NTOM but the satisfaction of seeing such a gem restored once more to its former glory made it worth it.

Unfortunately, throughout the three years, the fort remained under NTOM's "tutelage", local ground handling agents and tour operators failed to take advantage of this prize attraction and they could not be cajoled or persuaded to include the fort in their tour itineraries. The result was that visitors to the fort on Saturdays were only a trickle, compared to the steady flow of tourists who visit Fort St Elmo on weekends. Still NTOM was not discouraged and was prepared to keep spending money on the project, if not for anything else, just to keep the hands of vandals off the fort. A team of beach cleaners was at the fort three days a week for three years to ensure that when the fort opened on Saturdays it was always spic and span. We at NTOM were so very proud of our achievement then!

Sadly, however, when in September 1999, NTOM handed over to the newly set up Malta Tourism Authority, one of the first things that the authority's board did was to decide to withdraw from the fort as, apparently, it was considered that it was incurring too much expense to maintain it. This, as time has now proven, was a very short-sighted decision on the part of the MTA's board!

The very sad thing about this country is that we are ever so keen to shoot ourselves in the foot and undo what our predecessors have done just to prove that we can do it better. Perhaps one day MTA will realise it is not only the bottom line that matters in the preservation of our natural heritage - a prime asset in our tourism product.