History repeats itself in Seminary case

I wish to thank Kappara Administrative Committee chairman Frank Bartolo (The Sunday Times, March 13) for writing in support of Tal-Virtù residents who objected to the expansion of the Archbishop’s Seminary.

Dr Bartolo says that when Chiswick House School in Kappara was opened in the early 1990s, it was planned to take only about 50 students, yet it was subsequently allowed to expand, and it now has over 600 students.

Today, Kappara residents face daily traffic mayhem throughout the year when students are dropped off and picked up.

Despite all the hindsight of the past 20 years, in spite of the setting up of the Malta Environment and Planning Authority, the approval of the Structure Plan and the painstaking crafting of local plans, here we are with an almost identical situation to that of Kappara.

Tal-Virtù has about 275 households, or about 600 residents. The local plan approved in 2006 classified it as a residential priority area to protect it area from excessive development. In fact, the entire Rabat area is known to be archaeologically rich and environmentally sensitive.

The existing Seminary school, which moved to Tal-Virtù in 1978, today has 260 students. Access to it is already problematic, as the only way to reach it is through Tal-Virtù and the narrow residential streets of Rabat.

For all these reasons, the local plan declared that further development within the Seminary had to be severely limited to protect the amenity of the residential priority area.

And in recent months Mepa has on several occasions turned down development applications in order to protect residential areas from over-development.

Yet it has disregarded the local plan and approved the extension of the Seminary’s floor area by 230 per cent! The school population will shoot up to 710 students, outnumbering even Tal-Virtù residents.

All this will inevitably cause traffic chaos during school opening and closing times, not only in the residential streets of Tal-Virtù and Rabat, but also in the main artery, George Borg Olivier Road, which is already narrow and has even narrower pavements, and is subject to traffic jams.

All this will affect not only residents of Tal-Virtù, but many other residents in Rabat and Dingli, as besides the Seminary, St Agatha’s College will also be expanding. One must also take into consideration Savio College in Dingli and St Angela School at Tal-Virtù and, indeed, the government schools.

In giving the schools’ expansion the green light, Mepa and the Transport Malta have shown themselves to be very insensitive to all these residents, who will have to bear the same daily brunt Kappara residents face. History repeats itself and we never seem to learn.

What will these authorities do to remedy the situation?

Will George Borg Olivier Road be made one-way once again? Will streets in Tal-Virtù be made one-way or access restricted to school transport during school opening and closing hours, enforced by wardens?

Will the country lane leading past Tal-Virtù Castle up to the Seminary from the valley below be widened to alleviate the traffic flow?

Or will a completely new road linking Francesco Azopardi Street in Tal-Virtù to the Rabat Road via pristine countryside be developed?