It is easy for politicians to declare that “ODZ is ODZ” and promise to preserve our countryside when they know that much of it has already been handed over for development in the 2006 Rationalisation and Local Plans.
Flimkien ghal Ambjent Ahjar reports that this morning MEPA’s Environment and Planning Commission had no choice but to approve the Outline Development Permit of a supermarket on agricultural land the Xewkija Valley, since this was designated as a development zone in the Local Plans, even though much of the Industrial Estate just across the road is empty and neglected. These changes to the Local Plans will also accommodate the Lidl supermarket which has also applied on agricultural land four sites away in the same valley.
In this way, knowledgeable developers who bought cheap ODZ land before August 2006 are now sitting on a goldmine, as fields and ridges all over Malta and Gozo are built up, accommodated by the Rationalisation and Local Plans. In spite of the fact that the Rationalisation plans were issued just before the Eco-Gozo concept was announced, Gozo still received 30% of the designations to transfer ODZ to developable land.
FAA highlights the fact that tomorrow the MEPA Board will be reviewing an application to build 46 apartments and garages in a beautiful valley at Luqa. This valley full of protected carobs and dry stone walls was taken over as developable in the Rationalisation Plans. Facing the valley are rows of unsold new apartments. According to information supplied by MEPA, permits for hundreds of social housing units are presently being processed or built, while others are not yet occupied.
FAA echoes the Developers’ Association in calling for the purchase of available low-cost housing from existing excess stock rather than adding to the housing glut. Government officials are the first to admit that Government does not have the know-how to build as economically as experienced developers, as Minister John Dalli had declared publicly in the case of the Pembroke project. Why should we be wasting our taxes to destroy the countryside, when 76,000 units lie vacant? Such a solution makes sound economic sense, benefitting all sectors of our country including the financial sector which is struggling with an increased rate of defaulting loans, rather than destroying more of our countryside heritage and biodiversity.