The Office of the Ombudsman has alerted the prime minister and parliament to the fact that the Planning Authority has rejected its recommendations on illegal works carried out by the government on Comino.

Construction works done on service culverts, along a dust road to Blue Lagoon on the Natura 2000 island, had raised the ire and concern of environmental NGOs.

An investigation was subsequently carried out by the Commissioner for Environment and Planning within the Ombudsman’s office, Alan Saliba.

He concluded that the works, conducted by the Gozo Ministry between February and March, breached the Development and Planning Act and recommended that the site be returned to the state it was in before the works were carried out.

The commissioner also recommended that the PA should impose fines that would be placed in a fund for Comino’s environment.

However, no “adequate action” has been taken, so the ombudsman and the commissioner have sent the damning report to the prime minister and to the speaker of parliament.

In his letter, Ombudsman Anthony C. Mifsud said the PA would not be adopting its recommendations on “such a sensitive site”.

The ombudsman had called for a stop works notice, given that no permit was ever granted for the construction of a service culvert.

This did not fall under “emergency works” as the Gozo Ministry had claimed when it insisted it would “eliminate an existing danger” of the road caving in.

In its response to the ombudsman’s final report, PA executive chairperson Martin Saliba said the authority was “of the firm opinion that the declaration about emergency works in the interest of public safety by the government covered all the works necessary on the track, irrespective of their individual components, and did not constitute development”.

No adequate action has been taken

The culvert works did not require a permit so there was no need for an enforcement notice or a full-development application for the works, Saliba said.

The PA gave the Gozo Ministry, responsible for the project, until June 1 to complete it.

The ombudsman’s investigation had been requested by Robert Cutajar, the opposition’s  environment spokesman.

He slammed the executive chairman’s reaction yesterday, saying he was “not fit for purpose”, also for having challenged the ombudsman.

A government entity, whose role it was to safeguard the environment, was breaking regulations “like it was nothing” and was also in breach of the constitution, which called for protection of the environment, he said.

He questioned who would be shouldering the political responsibility for the illegalities on Comino.

Environmental NGOs remain in the dark as to what is happening on Comino, with Nature Trust expressing “major concern” about the state of one of the few remaining natural spaces on the island.

Its executive president, Vincent Attard again questioned the reason for the service culverts, which he said pointed to increased economic activity.

“We have management agreements on Natura 2000 that are governed by lots of red tape and the authorities are very strict. Then, in Comino and other sensitive areas, it is a free-for-all situation,” he said.

Attard also expressed concern about the trend of sanctioning illegal activity that was then “there to stay”.

There was no political agenda on environmental issues, he added. Comino needed a holistic management plan for the next five years and not a piecemeal approach.

Friends of the Earth Malta reported the “environmental crime” on Comino to the police.

Questions to the Gozo and environment ministries and the Environment and Resources Authority (ERA), asking about their position on the situation in Comino, have been ignored since the ombudsman issued his recommendations in April.

The ERA had greenlighted the works under certain conditions but construction material was found dumped onto the garigue surroundings and a retaining wall was damaged by heavy machinery, the ombudsman had found.

The authority had ordered the contractor to stop works because they were “not satisfactorily contained within the indicated area and impacted on its surroundings”. 

The environment and Gozo ministers were also asked to confirm whether the service culverts were built to cater for the kiosks that line the area in summer, allowing them to become permanent fixtures.

The Gozo Ministry had said they were being dug to eliminate the use of electricity generators but had denied fixed kiosks were being planned.

According to its 2019 annual report, of the 84 cases handled by the Commissioner for Environment and Planning, four were sustained and the recommendations of two were implemented while the other two were partly implemented.

Overall, 30 per cent of the outcomes of all the ombudsman’s final reports were not sustained.

The annual report shows that the PA was the government entity by far most subject to complaints.