Government hits out at ‘misleading’ report on Siggiewi land exchange

The Government Property Department has played down media reports on a recent sale of public land in Siggiewi, insisting that it had followed normal procedure.  

The Sunday Times of Malta reported in a front-page story that the Lands Department had on 6 January handed two tumoli of land in Siggiewi to the Xerri family as compensation for land in Xaghra that the government had expropriated in 1992 for road widening purposes.

On the same day that the deal was made, the Gozitan family sold off that land to building contractor Carmel Farrugia, who owns a villa adjacent to the land, for €31,000. The farmers who had tilled the land in question claimed that they had been left in the dark about the deal and were only informed about it when Farrugia told them to vacate it earlier this year. 

The Times article – titled ‘Farmer questions ‘sinister’ lands deal’ - cited the Disposal of Government Land Act as saying that the government can only exchange public land as compensation if its value does not exceed 30% of the expropriated land.

It went on to say that the Siggiewi land was worth €31,000 while the Xaghra land has a value €29,474. It quoted unnamed “legal experts” as saying that the 30% law had been breached.

However, basing calculations solely on the figures provided, shows that the 30% law would only have breached if the Xaghra land had been valued at under €21,700. As it was valued at €29,474, it mathematically means that it only exceeded 5% of the value of the Siggiewi land.

In a statement, the GPD said that the difference in value between the exchanged properties is only 5%, rendering the exchange perfectly legal.

“A valuation of the both the expropriated land and the land requested was prepared by qualified architects,” the GPS said. “The owners of the expropriated land had to pay €1,526, this being the difference between the value of the expropriated land and the land given in exchange.”

They added that the Xerri family were included in waiting list for eventual compensation, and that they had complained that all other owners of lands expropriated for the same road widening had already been compensated.

The GPD insisted that the procedure followed has been standard practice for over a decade and that the exchange was endorsed by both the [then] director general of the GPD and the former Lands Commissioner.

“It appears as though this department is being continuously targeted in order to disrupt its workflow and to demoralise its staff,” it said.