In my way of doing business I not only accept but also encourage objective criticism as this gives me an opportunity to understand what people are thinking about the way I work to earn my daily bread.
A storm in a teacup stirred up by someone with ulterior motives objecting to any project in Qala
Unfortunately, however, Anne Zammit’s article ‘Marga Valley and the permit mill’ (The Sunday Times, April 14) is a biased piece that must have been written without the author first checking the facts.
It is not acceptable for the author to write just what she was told by people with ulterior motives, exposing her lack of familiarity with the case, that led her to disregard the real cause of flooding in the area.
In her article, she depicted a water culvert crossing the road that is not more than 1.80 metres wide and 1.5 metres high as “crossing the bridge”. After one crosses this ‘bridge’ (please remember to pay the toll) she wrote, “you are in ancient territory”.
Incredibly, this description refers to a neighbourhood of houses and villas, all of which – except for two – were built after the 1980s. One encounters the other existing old buildings before the so-called ‘bridge’, and our project respects the characteristics of these nearby buildings in spite of the fact that we are not obliged to do so as our site lies outside the Urban Conservation Area.
Even worse, her allegation that “developers have been pressing for an Outside Development Zone permit” is completely false. We never applied to build in the ODZ part of the site, and the proposed buildings were always well within the limit of development. We accepted to reduce the number of units to three, siting them further inside the development area in a final bid to reach a compromise.
The only proposed development in the ODZ was the swimming pools, which were allowed according to Malta Environment and Planning Authority policy at the time of our application. These were also removed during the application stage. The least Ms Zammit should have done was to look at all the submitted plans.
She also alleged that “the permit has been refused several times even after fresh plans where submitted”. In fact, the permit was refused only once, and it is now at appeal stage. Moreover she regards “moving a garage door... which will allow the applicant to re-enter the permit mill” as some scandalous procedure.
God forbid if we ever arrive to the point where an applicant for a building permit cannot make changes to plans in order to address some issue. This does not mean that the processing of the application will start afresh.
The existing flooding problem is not caused by us but is the result of poor road and flood water infrastructure. We have proposed to rebuild these ourselves at our own expense, not with public funds, as I personally declared in the tribunal sessions and at on site meetings with the objector and his appointed technical experts, who actually agreed that a technical solution is possible. The comment in Ms Zammit’s article that building on piles is “science fiction” only serves to reveal the lack of technical knowhow of whoever said it.
Ms Zammit even decided to attack us unnecessarily and tarnish our reputation. According to her, Karkanja Ltd “have a checkered history of abusive and illegal behaviour when it comes to build-ing permits”. This is nothing but a barefaced untruth.
To substantiate this allegation, the writer mentioned two cases. The first one was that “in a court case against the developer it was found that an Għajnsielem penthouse agreed upon was not in conformity with Mepa permits”.
This was a case of a client to whom we sold an airspace with a valid penthouse permit and who entrusted us with its building. When construction started, the client instructed us to enlarge the bedrooms by one foot. We agreed to do this as we knew this was simply a case of an acceptable minor amendment to the approved plans.
The client subsequently had second thoughts, and in order not to lose the deposit by going back from his legal commitment to buy (through a signed promise of sale – konvenju), he argued that the building was not according to permit. We immediately applied for the necessary minor amendment but this was approved just after the elapse of the konvenju.
In the civil case with this client, the magistrate ruled that this approval should have been obtained prior to the elapse of the konvenju. The illegal and abusive behaviour on our part is obviously imaginary.
In the second case “another partially ODZ development in Triq San Blas, Nadur, has also been turned down and an appeal against the decision is due to be heard in October”. This is an application for a house well within the development boundary and inside the approved scheme but including a large garden and a proposed pool sited in the ODZ. It is accessed from a private alley together with three more existing houses, one of which is a replica of our proposal.
Although recommended for approval by the Mepa’s Planning Directorate, the Environment and Planning Commission turned down the application on the basis that the access is from a private alley and not a schemed one, ignoring the interpretation of the relative policy by Mepa’s Forward Planning Unit and many similar cases even in the same street. Our abusive and illegal behaviour is again imaginary.
The Marga Valley case is a storm in a teacup stirred up by someone with ulterior motives objecting to any project in Qala. A number of farmers were given false information, instilling the fear that their water supply would be ruined, in order to entice them to sign a petition.
People concerned with existing flooding should perhaps ask why the Qala local council is not taking care to clean the culverts in the area, leaving them clogged with debris, resulting in rainwater having to pass through our site. This made it possible for our site to be photographed flooded with water. Very convenient, of course.
Euchar Vella is managing director of Karkanja Ltd.