Volunteers hauled out discarded fridges, rotten wood and piles of broken glass from the Qbajjar Battery on Sunday.
The fate of the abandoned historic building remains in limbo as heritage NGO Din l-Art Ħelwa (DLH) continues to wait for authorities to make a final decision on its request to take guardianship over the site, jeopardising the funding that has been secured to restore it.
The clean-up event saw some 40 rubbish bags worth of waste being removed from the site, including four boxes of broken glass, piles of rotten wood and discarded fridges.
Photo: Daniel CiliaThe voluntary groups Nadur Nadif and the Gozo branch of the Cast-Out Project also participated in the clean-up, together with the Zumba with Pahola class, who use the parvis of the battery to host outdoor sessions. Żebbuġ councillor Daniel Cordina also assisted with the clean-up.
DLH has already secured permits and funding to give the battery a new lease on life, however, the bureaucratic process to decide on its request for guardianship is still pending.
As long as the guardianship deed remains pending, the requested funding cannot be passed on to the NGO.
When asked about these delays in April, the Culture Ministry could not explain why the process had stalled for so long and said that every request for the issuance of a guardianship deed needs to follow a standardised procedure and each request is currently being processed according to this procedure.
Photo: Daniel CiliaBelieved to have been built in 1715, the Knights’ era battery was leased to a Gozitan businessman in the 1970s and it was turned into a club.
Several changes were made to the inside of the building to accommodate this, including illegal structures that remained on the site until 1999, when the Planning Authority issued an enforcement notice on the illegal work.
Although the lease ended in 2003, the tenants refused to let go of it, despite an eviction order issued by the Lands Department. Eventually, legal proceedings were instituted but the case never saw the light of day.