Malta will celebrate Freedom Day under the rule of land speculators

Despite the fact that Malta will be celebrating Freedom Day tomorrow, the country remains under the rule of big business and land speculators, Moviment Graffitti said on Saturday.

The activist group is currently camped outside the Planning Authority in Floriana, where it is “symbolically laying siege the Planning Authority”.

The authority, they say is putting the country under siege with unbridled development which is putting our country under siege with unbridled development which is ruining people’s quality of life and compromising the future of the island.

The activists have now entered their third day of protests, insisting that despite no longer being under colonial rule, it’s people were not free.

“For decades, the business class has accumulated power of a disproportionate nature in our country, with the result that politics ended up becoming a slave to the interests of this class,” Graffitti said.

READ ALSO: Moviment Graffitti, Kamp Emergenza Ambjent occupy Planning Authority driveway

The group is calling for the immediately retraction of the PA’s fuel station policy, which allowed fuel stations to have their footprint increased and be relocated outside the development zone.

Despite authorities pledging to review, the authority is still receiving and processing applications on the basis of the policy.  

Graffitti said there were currently 14 pending applications for fuel stations, four of which have already been approved.

“Together these make up a total stretch of land five time the size of the Floriana Granaries,” they said, adding that the policy was part of an even larger problem, with ‘senseless’ and ‘harmful’ development projects cropping up all over the island. 

“One only needs to consider the approval of monstrous projects such as that of the DB Group on the former ITS site and the approval of tens of dubious permits that go against actual planning policies,” the group said.

Yesterday the activists marched from the authority to the Transport Ministry, which is responsible for the authority, where they again demanded that the policy be retracted immediately. Graffitti member Andre Callus insisted that the policy government was intentionally dragging its feet on the policy in order to allow for more applications to be processed.  

Infrastructure minister Ian Borg told the activists that a new policy would be published for public consultation in April.