Standstill in Naxxar as works on Reach hub inexistent for 12 months

Works on a €32 million disability hub project in Naxxar have been at a standstill for at least 12 months, with work grinding to a halt in 2020, and an excavation site left untouched for months

Works on a €32 million disability hub project in Naxxar have been at a standstill for at least 12 months, with work grinding to a halt in 2020, and an excavation site left untouched for months.

The hub, renamed Reach, is being built next to the former Trade Fair grounds and will consist of four fully detached blocks for 78 semi-independent living residential units, a 26-room hostel, a community building, restaurant and retail outlets, a therapy centre with pool, gym and an underground car park.

The community hub is intended for persons with a disability living on or visiting the site.

The project was given the green light by the Planning Authority in December 2017, with excavation work starting in 2019, but then soon came to a stop. Mounds of inert waste were left on site since then, much to the dismay and concern of neighbouring residents. No work was carried out on the site throughout 2020, despite construction work not falling under restrictions imposed to curb the spread of COVID-19.

Questions previously sent to former parliamentary secretary for disability Silvio Parnis went unanswered for weeks.

But Naxxar mayor Anne Marie Muscat Fenech Adami told MaltaToday that the council too was concerned about the lack of progress on the site. “Unfortunately, the council keeps asking what is going on, but no answers are forthcoming,” she said. “We’ve had no contact whatsoever and are stymied as to why work seems to have stopped.”

It is unclear if the excavation work has been completed and if the work falls under a separate tender. No explanation has also been given as to why mounds of inert waste have been left on site for months.

The project goes back to 2016, when Justyne Caruana was parliamentary secretary responsible for the sector at the time. In 2017 objectors had argued that the proposed development would make an already bad traffic problem even worse and that the project was not fit for the area.

The Commission for the Rights of Persons with Disability had opposed the project in 2016, and had even mentioned its objections in its four-year report presented to the United Nations in criticism of the government’s implementation of the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disability.

Critics argued that the concept of a hub for disabled persons would distance them from the rest of the community, going directly against provisions of the Equal Opportunities (Persons and Disability) Act and CRPD guidelines which recommend that persons with disability “not be physically segregated.”