A Gozitan mayor and Labour Party electoral candidate has accused the Planning Authority of sanctioning the “rape” of Gozo.
Christian Zammit was reacting to news that the PA approved a permit that will allow mega-developers to build a huge apartment complex in Sannat, just metres away from the Gozitan village’s cliffs.
Christian Zammit.“I will say it once again,” Zammit wrote on Facebook. “And I do not care if I end up high and dry in the election. I have no ties to power. Planning rules for Gozo need to be amended before it is too late.
“This rape has to stop,” he concluded.
Zammit is the mayor of Xagħra and a PL candidate on the 13th district.
His reaction prompted a flurry of congratulatory comments from followers, who commended him on speaking his mind.
The permit in question, PA/02087/21, was filed by Gozitan developer Mark Agius and is to build 73 apartments and 60 garages.
But it is just one of three separate permits for adjacent plots that, when combined together, allow Agius and his co-investors – among them mega-developer Joseph Portelli - to build 125 apartments.
There is little love lost between Portelli and the Xagħra mayor. Last October, Portelli had claimed that the Xagħra council which Zammit leads had discriminated against him.
Portelli claimed that the council had objected to him building a basement in a boutique hotel in the town, only for it to apply and obtain permission for a similar project itself.
Zammit had flatly denied that claim, saying “the local council does not take into account names or faces when raising an objection.”
In the Sannat case decided by the PA this week, objectors warned that applicants were “salami slicing” the development into smaller permits, to try and bypass regulatory scrutiny and avoid having to submit an Environmental Impact Assessment as part of the project.
But despite their warnings, the Planning Commission on Friday decided unanimously to approve the project, ignoring the salami-slicing claims by saying that was “not within the board’s remit” to decide.
That issue, she said, should have been raised at an earlier stage.
Two of the commission’s three members, Mirielle Fsadni and Anthony Camilleri, remained silent throughout the hearing. Chairperson Stephania Baldacchino terminated the meeting as objectors yelled “viva l-korruzzjoni” and “you should be ashamed”.