The Marsa power station site, which is a prime location in Grand Harbour, will not be returned to the public for another 99 years – giving the Chinese a valuable asset.
The planning authority has just approved the decommissioning and dismantling of the plant but once the waste is cleared it will not be returned to the public.
The Energy Ministry said that there were no plans for the use of the site given to Enemalta for 99 years except that one of the main considerations for the transfer of land was its prime location.
Last August, the government transferred a considerable amount of land to Enemalta before the deal with Shanghai Electric Power was signed. This included the old Marsa power station site.
Now the Chinese State-owned company has a 33 per cent share in all these assets that were transferred in 11 contracts signed last August.
When details of the 11 contracts, which include the Marsa site, were exposed by the Nationalist Party on April 7 the government had said it made sense for Enemalta to own the site during the decommissioning process.
No decision has yet been taken on the use of the Marsa power station site
However, this process does not take 99 years, leading to further questions from this newspaper for the government to outline plans that justified the transfer of public land for this length of time.
The answer was there were none. “No decision has yet been taken on the use of the Marsa power station site once the existing electricity generation structures are dismantled… This evaluation for the use of the site will take into consideration various factors, including the position of the site within the Grand Harbour and all national policies and plans for this area.”
The main consideration was the site’s location within the Grand Harbour, fuelling speculation that the transfer of land enriched the company’s asset base before the deal with Shanghai Electric was concluded.
The 11 contracts were mostly concluded on August 25 in a marathon session that lasted until the early hours of the next morning. This was just two days before the government published legal notices that removed the obligation on Enemalta to go to Parliament if it transferred land to third parties.
One of the contracts was a private agreement between the Land Department and Enemalta for the transfer of 310,000 square metres of public land for 25 years for the installation of PV panels.
Other contracts included the sale by government-owned Petromalta Ltd to Enemed (which took over from Enemalta) of sites at Ħas Saptan, Għaxaq and Marsaxlokk terminal; temporary emphyteusis by the Land Department to Enemalta for 25 years for the Delimara power station land; and another temporary emphyteusis for 65 years granting Enemalta a number of sites in Għaxaq. This was backdated to 2004.