After DB decision, Pembroke mayor questions government funding for 1.5 km tunnel

Pembroke’s Labour mayor Dean Hili has reminded the authorities that the DB project as approved can only function through the construction of a 1.5 km tunnel - the largest ever to be constructed in Malta - linking the project to Pembroke which still has to be approved by the Planning Authority.

“One is duty-bound to ask whether this tunnel is still part of the country’s plans, especially when one considers that in between the presentation of this application and the court decision, the country has gone through a pandemic which should have changed a number of priorities,” Hili said in a Facebook status Wednesday evening.

Moreover, Hili underlined the fact that this “expense should never have been carried by any government”.

An application for a 1.5-meter tunnel passing underneath a Natura 2000 site, linking the DB project to the coast road and various other infrastructural works including another tunnel under regional road, had been presented in 2019 but has been dormant for the past three years.   The court sentence itself referred to the fact that no permit has been issued for this development.

Hili also thanked activists and residents for fighting against the DB development, insisting that despite the court decision that confirmed the legality of a permit for a 12-storey hotel and two 17 storey towers, “in the long term, the values which inspired this effort” will still bring about change.

The mayor also pointed out that traffic problems in the area are bound to intensify in view of pending projects in the area, including major changes to already approved projects.

In an indirect  reference to a new application for the construction of a 34- and 27-storey tower project at Villa Rosa Hili noted that “incredibly some developers seem to engaged in a race towards the sky.”

While expressing hope that priorities will change the mayor expressed the anguish of residents of “the long years of inconvenience that they have ahead of them”.