Having waited for some five years for the new aquarium project to come to fruition, it does not seem this was sufficient time to coordinate the preparatory works related to this project. The issue of the relocation of the shacks serving as kiosks was left until well after the works commenced. Talking of management by crisis would be an understatement because all this brought a chaotic situation to the area with every department concerned insisting on different areas for the relocation of the kiosks with the Malta Environent and Planning Authority and the Land Department representatives insisting that both their departments’ permission is needed before any moves take place.

... without alternative parking areas Qawra and Buġibba will soon end up a ‘drive-through resort’- Charles Micallef, Qawra

Someone then came up with the idea that they could be relocated to the parking spaces by extending the pavements. Works commenced with the removal of the shrubs and curb stones by the Ministry of Infrastructure employees after which they again seem to have had a change of heart and this haphazard idea was withdrawn and the curbs stones are now being reinstated and the shrubs replanted.

A platform that was also built on a scheduled parcel of land without Mepa’s sanction, opposite the casino, has now also been dismantled.

One of the kiosks has already been relocated to the middle of the wider part of the pavement near Ta’ Fra Ben, blocking the major part of the promenade and making it difficult for people to walk there.

To cap it all, the subject of where and what is going to replace the 240 spaces that are now being used for the project along with the 90 spaces in the official Ta’ Fra Ben car park seems to have not yet been taken into consideration by the planners and somehow they fail to understand that without alternative parking areas Qawra and Buġibba will soon end up, as I predicted on The Times some weeks ago, a “drive-through resort”.