Octogenarian Joseph Attard said he suffered a slight stroke worrying over an eviction order issued by the Land Department from a boathouse he has been renting since 1964 and on which he has rental title.
Mr Attard, 88, is challenging the eviction order through a judicial protest he filed against the Commissioner of Land who, he says, has no legal title over his and other boathouses situated beneath Buġibba Square.
He told Times of Malta yesterday that the boathouses were originally constructed in the 1960s when the Government had expropriated the land to build Triq Islet Promenade and the square.
It built the road and the underlying boathouses, each measuring approximately 10 feet by 20 feet, and offered them for rent to the public by tender.
Mr Attard was one of those who made a bid and began renting the boathouse for his frejgatina vessel in July 1964.
Two years later, Residual Ltd purchased the land from the previous owner but has since never been compensated by successive governments.
The company filed a case before the First Hall of the Civil Court in its Constitutional jurisdiction in 2006 claiming it had not yet been paid.
In October 2011, Mr Justice Lino Farrugia Sacco found in favour of the company and transferred the boathouses in this road to Residual Ltd as compensation. There are 27 of them.
The court gave the two parties six months to reach an amicable solution, after which the boathouses became the company’s property. The boathouse owners were never informed of the case.
The Land Department never appealed this judgment but almost two years later, in January this year, it sent letters to all tenants quoting the judgment, informing them that the rent was being terminated on June 30.
The department was now fixing eviction orders on the boathouses, giving their tenants time to remove all their belongings and threatening to remove the items at their expense.
“They called, threatening us, when the Land Department has no say in the matter as it lost the case and it is I who has the rental title. Now they want us out and are refusing to accept the rent we pay every six months,” Mr Attard told this newspaper.
Mr Attard and his children are claiming the use of two weights and two measures and discrimination because there were others who were illegally occupying land elsewhere, ostensibly the boathouses in Armier and Mellieħa. Some of the Buġibba boathouses also have water and electricity.
In his judicial protest, filed by lawyers Mark Vassallo and Yanica Caruana, Mr Attard argued that the department was failing to honour its contractual agreement with those who had rental title.
Moreover, the department had not offered the tenants an alternative solution.
Mr Attard warned that he was prepared to use all possible legal avenues to safeguard his rights and was holding the Commissioner of Land responsible for damages.
Times of Malta is informed that other boathouse tenants are also challenging the eviction order while others have simply backed out and returned the keys.