Caravans forced to move out of Ġnejna

A number of caravans occupying a private piece of land at Ġnejna Bay were moved yesterday morning after the planning authority decided to take enforcement action.

In all, 12 caravans were towed away by their owners and another by the Malta Environment and Planning Authority, whose personnel were accompanied by the police.

The owners had received a call at about 6 a.m. informing them they would be slapped with a €2,333 fine if they did not immediately shift their caravans from the edge of the sandy beach. They had been going there for years. The presence of the mobile homes at the idyllic bay had long irked residents of nearby Mġarr.

Pauline Deguara, who was at her Ħamrun home when she got the call, said: "Initially, I thought something had happened to my son."

Another caravan owner, who did not want to be named, said he would have expected the owners of the land, and not the authority or the police, to ask him to move. The man said his 64-year-old father, also a caravan owner, had just been told he needed open heart surgery: "I did not know how to tell him we had to move the caravans."

The land is owned by a number of companies and individuals who had complained to Mepa about the illicit use of their land. Their lawyer, Richard Galea Debono, said the caravans were not there with the owners' blessings: "They are happy Mepa took the necessary action".

Although the owners said they had not received an enforcement notice, Mepa said that last month it had informed the landowners that action would be taken without any further notification.

Both the land and caravan owners had been served with an enforcement notice last year following what constituted an unauthorised change of use of the land into a caravan site.

Although the caravans were removed in October, they had begun to mushroom again over the past few weeks. Mepa enforcement officers will continue to keep an eye on the area. The issue was raised by Nationalist MEP candidate Alan Deidun last month. This irked Ms Deguara: "They let the election pass and came to remove us," she complained.