A proposed road in Dingli that has attracted environmental protests cannot be built without a permit because half of it would be on Outside Development Zone land, NGO Graffitti said on Tuesday.
Attempts to build a road connecting Sqaq il-MUSEUM, Daħla tas-Sienja, and Triq San Ġwann Bosco in Dingli were stopped last month after environmentalists and farmers gathered to stop workers digging up the land it is due to be built on.
Activists say the road is unnecessary, will take up already-scarce farmland and would post a structural risk to a nearby chapel.
The protests forced Infrastructure Malta workers to leave the site with no works done. Infrastructure Minister Ian Borg, who lives in Dingli, subsequently went on a PR blitz to argue in favour of building the road.
On Tuesday, Moviment Graffitti said that a closer look at the area’s local plan indicated that Infrastructure Malta could not build the road without obtaining a planning permit first.
The roads agency had previously argued that the road was schemed in the area’s 2006 local plan and therefore did not require a permit, the NGO said.
“The schemed road as shown on the PA GeoServer is incorrect, if not illegal, since it does not match the local plan,” Graffitti argued.
“The local plan indicates only the street alignment on one side and fails to show the alignment on the other side. This is mainly because half, if not more, of the road would be in ODZ and therefore requires a full development application to construct.”
It is not the first time that Infrastructure Malta has been accused of disregarding planning rules. The agency, which has been tasked with rebuilding all of Malta’s roads in seven years, moved ahead with works to rebuild Triq tal-Balal in San Ġwann despite having no permit to do so, clashed with activists over works in a Żebbuġ valley and was also criticised by a court for forging ahead with works on the Central Link Project in Attard before an appeal verdict was out.
In its statement, Moviment Graffitti called on the Infrastructure Ministry and the Environment Ministry to “immediately and definitively” halt plans to build the Dingli road, which it described as “useless and harmful”, and to remove the incomplete road drawings from the local plan available on the PA website.