Updated | No plan for marina says ministry on swimming ban intended for Sally Port safety assessment

A series of no-swimming signs installed at the Toqba area in the Sally Port beneath the Birgu bastions, are intended for a safety risk assessment, the transport ministry said.

The transport ministry has said there is no connection between signs installed by Infrastructure Malta in the Sally Port area in Birgu, to any proposed marina extension, saying there was no such plan.

The statement was issued in the wake of a protest organised by Birgu residents in the area.

“There will be no development of a marina in Sally Port. That which was presented by Transport Malta three years ago referred to the reorganisation of the existing berths, and in any case, has nothing to do with the signs that were installed only for the health and safety of people, and no other reason,” the ministry said.

“There is no cause for speculation. In Birgu, the restoration of the quays in the Sally Port area, including the creation of a new promenade along the Cottonera shoreline, has been successfully completed for public enjoyment. These quays, spanning approximately 600 metres or the length of six football pitches, are situated in the Sally Port or ‘it-Toqba’ area, beneath the Birgu bastions along the Kalkara shore,” the ministry said.

The ministry said that many parts of the quay structures had crumbled and suffered major storm damage over the years. Some had reached a perilous state, posing significant risks to public safety.

Following these works, Infrastructure Malta commissioned a post-construction stage health and safety risk assessment, and it was for this reason that signs were put up with specific warnings.

IM is committed to continuing to strengthen maritime infrastructure with a €5 million investment in the Sally Port area, which will benefit the public. Infrastructure Malta reconstructed the damaged sections and, employing a team of skilled divers, undertook the repair of submerged quay structures without necessitating their complete removal.

Earlier in the day, residents in the port town of Birgu joined their mayor John Boxall in a sign of protest at Infrastructure Malta signs affixed on the Toqba coast putting an end to swimming in the area.

The local council’s protest was joined by Moviment Graffitti, which said the no-swimming signs indicated something far more alarming, referring to the 340-berth yacht marina planned by the national works agency.

“It is unacceptable that the urban spaces used by Cottonera’s residents for entire generations, are not being stolen by those who want to usurp them for private use. We will support Birgu’s residents so that nobody takes away what is the public’s by right,” Graffitti said.

In 2020 Transport Malta presented plans for 305 new berthing spaces, despite a clear commitment from transport minister Ian Borg that the Kalkara marina would not grow by “even one centimetre”.

In October 2019, MaltaToday had revealed that the Planning Authority’s geoserver was showing an application for an area covering around 35,000sq.m of the creek along Triq Sally Port and Triq ix-Xatt, in Kalkara, but the website gave no public details on what was then a technically ‘incomplete’ application.

News of the potential expansion of the existing 21,000 sq.m marina had angered residents, who took to social media to express their outrage. But Borg then denied that there would be an expansion, by saying that “the Kalkara marina will not be growing by even one centimetre.”

The project is being justified as a way of creating a uniform mooring arrangement for boats, which are presently anchored in a random and haphazard manner.