Naxxar disability hub ‘an elephant that never started walking’, Inclusion Minister says

A Naxxar disability hub which was set to become a mini-village for people with disabilities has instead turned into ‘an elephant that never started walking’, Inclusion Minister Julia Farrugia Portelli said on Monday.

Responding to a question by Nationalist MP Graziella Galea on Monday, Farrugia Portelli admitted that the construction of this disability hub ‘Reach’ has faced several delays for various reasons.

She cited the finding of archaeological remains on site and legal issues as some of the main reasons for the delay.

However, the minister said that this ‘waiting period’ is allowing the Inclusion Ministry to rethink the project and make sure that it meeds the modern needs of people with disability.

“We will continue along the same road we planned out. Stakeholders showed us that there are different needs. As we’re in this phase, this rethinking should be done with the best use of local and foreign expertise and according to the needs of today,” she said.

The €32 million Reach project had to be built next to the former trade fair grounds: four detached blocks of 78 residential units, a 26-room hostel, a community building, restaurant and retail outlets, and therapy centre and underground car park. The hub is intended for persons with a disability living on site.

The project was given the green light in December 2017 and the tender was awarded to Bonnici Brothers of Burmarrad. Excavations started in 2019, but ground to a halt by December that same year, with the site left untouched since then.

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

Even the Commission for the Rights of Persons with Disability had opposed the project, mentioning its objections in its four-year report to the United Nations in criticism of the government’s implementation of the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disability.

Critics said 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 Act and CRPD guidelines recommending they “not be physically segregated”.