Yves CalG's (March 17) expresses shock and disgust that the residents of Tigné and Qui-Si-Sana should dare protest against the officially sanctioned rape of their area. The Tigné peninsula is undergoing massive development. The MIDI, Town Square, Fort Cambridge and Qui-Si-Sana car park mega projects are all within the same few square kilometres. Thousands of new housing units and several skyscrapers are to be built, as well as hundreds of thousands of square metres of commercial space. The removal of all on-street parking from Manoel Island to Tigné Point will further add to the pressure of traffic on this tiny bit of land. Mepa estimates well over 30,000 trucks, buses and cars a day will pass along the Tigné Seafront. All this development and the resulting traffic congestion will have serious repercussions on both the residential and business communities, as well as knock-on effects on the rest of Sliema.
Notwithstanding, this administration refuses to recognise the deleterious effects of this excessive development on the health and safety of the residents of Tigné and Qui-Si-Sana. To make matters worse, the failure to ensure that the MIDI tunnel was built to modern safety standards led to the ADT presenting a plan to route all Sliema-bound traffic up Censu Scerri and Tigné Streets and through Qui-Si-Sana, turning these residential side streets into major traffic arteries. To make matters even worse, this tunnel has blocked the Qui-Si-Sana end of Censu Scerri Street and this bit of public road has been incorporated into the development.
In the case of Fort Cambridge, the tender for the project was altered after it was awarded. The plans submitted are substantially different to those presented to the public in the development brief and blatantly contravene public sanitation laws. Despite these irregularities, permission was rushed through only a few days after submission. Similar to the Qui-Si-Sana and Pender Place scandals, the public was never informed and no public consultations were held on the new plans. Furthermore, the government has ignored its own criteria and waived the requirement to conduct an environmental impact assessment, accepting the developer's word that the addition of 400 odd residential units in massed 121 to 23-storey blocks will have no effects on shadows and wind in relation to the adjacent residences and there will be no deterioration of the skyline. This not to mention the effect of the increased traffic in the narrow side streets of Tigné and Qui-Si-Sana. This bulldozing of residents' rights is in direct contravention of EU law.
Sliema is already greatly overdeveloped. With the blessing of the government, this is to continue for years to come, our once-beautiful town destined to have the skyline and population density of a Hong Kong slum. Sliema's air quality has deteriorated rapidly over the past few years; these developments will make Tigné and the rest of Sliema a pollution hot spot, with all the accompanying disease and misery.
It is standard practice by developers to allow property to deteriorate prior to demolition. The deliberate neglect of Tigné and Qui-Si-Sana has been happening for the past 10 years.
Mr CalG, by his own admission, lives far away on the periphery of Sliema, his vision severely handicapped by his blue-tinted spectacles. The residents of Tigné and Qui-Si-Sana have no personal or political agendas. The Qui-Si-Sana Residents Association was born out of the need to band together in order to uphold the right of our families to live in a safe and healthy environment as it is painfully obvious that, at every level, this administration has absolutely no intention of doing so.