PN government would seek to renegotiate Zonqor and TownSquare projects - Busuttil

Opposition leader Simon Busuttil says his government would met develeopers to convince them to find alternatives to proposed development

Busuttil vows to rengotiate Zonqor and Town Square projects
Busuttil vows to rengotiate Zonqor and Town Square projects

would immediately call the investors behind the American University scheduled to be built in Zonqor, to renegotiate terms and find an alternate site for the development, opposition leader Simon Busuttil said on Wednesday.

The PN was encouraged by positive feedback to its entreaties to the developers of Town Square in Sliema to reconsider having a 39-storey high-rise building developed, he said.

Busuttil was speaking in Parliament on the PN’s document on a better quality of life, published last week.

The document, he said, was structured around three main objectives, including the long-term vision and commitment on the part of the PN to safeguard the quality of life, applying strategic planning to land development, and having environmental policies based on sound values.

He said environment and the economy could co-exist, contrary to what many people believed.

“Some of the 71 proposals we have presented in the document stand out for their ingenuity and innovation,” he said. “We propose, for instance, the concept of right to solar access, so that people who end up living in shadow because of out-of-hand development be compensated.”

Busuttil said it was not enough for the government to say that Malta was ideal for photo-voltaic panel installation, since the land available for such PV farms was limited.

“If the government were forward-looking and embraced innovation, it would be talking of road-surface solar panels, that are being discussed abroad at the moment,” he said.

The opposition leader said that the document had been well-received by numerous eNGOs, environmentalists and opinionists, citing MaltaToday’s own James Debono’s opinion article as one of the prime examples of support for the PN’s proposals.