The environmental group Flimkien Ghal Ambjent Ahjar has called for the resignation of the members of St John’s Cathedral Foundation after research it carried out revealed that foundation plans to develop an underground museum got underway before 2006.
The museum is being proposed by the foundation to house the vast range of artefacts that adorn the CoCathedral, including the world unique set of 29 pieces of Flemish tapestries.
FAA said this afternoon that its findings had serious implications in that for two years, this major expenditure on Malta’s premier public monument was never revealed to the public, nor presented in electoral manifestos.
It also indicated that the plans to excavate most of St John’s Street and Square in front of the Cathedral, were already known before the re-paving of St John’s Street and Merchants’ Street at great public expense.
The FAA said that reports drawn up by some of Malta’s foremost heritage experts, which were not hitherto revealed, did not mince their words as regarded the high risk of damage that the project could cause.
These reports came from the Heritage Advisory Committee, the Planning Authority’s Integrated Heritage Management Unit and the Cultural Heritage Advisory Committee to MEPA.
Flimkien għal Ambjent Aħjar said it was extremely perplexed by the Foundation’s decision to ignore the reports highlighting the project’s strong risks to the Cathedral,
drawn up by heritage authorities which included some of Malta’s most respected heritage architects.
The foundation was determined to waste €150,000 on an EIA in an attempt to press ahead with its project, irrespective of geology expert statements that geological studies in a built-up area were not conclusive due to rock fissures remaining concealed and subsequently subsiding once excavations begin, resulting in cracks to the walls of St. John’s and damage to the artistic marble paving.
The foundation’s decision to press on regardless of the risks to the structural stability of the Cathedral indicated a shocking lack of responsibility on the part of the Foundation, as did its failure to bring this project to the attention of the public over a span of two years.