The government’s decision to stop payments to families whose land was taken away from them in the 1980s left hundreds facing an injustice, the Nationalist Party said yesterday.

The injustice occurred between 1981 and 1983 when Labour ministers took chunks of land from private owners and gave it to constituents. Land owners were not paid for their property and, decades later, this injustice was also affecting those who were given the land to develop, the PN said.

Since the land owners never got paid, they remained the legal owners. Yet, the injustice now also affected those who spent money building a home on the land they had received from the government of the time because it did not belong to them and so they were unable to sell the properties or use them as assets in financial dealings, the party added.

The injustices continued to be fought to this day. In 2012, a court ordered Lay Lay Construction – a company owned by Michael Axisa, who was close to notorious Labour minister Lorry Sant - to remove buildings erected on 446 square metres of the land in Attard that did not belong to it. The judgment affected 11 families who had bought the properties.

The situation was a double-edged sword which the former Nationalist government starting tackling in 2009 through the Home Ownership Scheme.

About 600 families were paid for land “stolen” from them while about another 600 became owners of their home for the first time.

The Prime Minister acknowledged that no payments were made as part of this scheme since the Labour Party was elected in 2013. He was replying to a parliamentary question by Nationalist MP Ryan Callus.

This led the PN to state yesterday this was “a Gaffarena government”. It was referring to a report by this newspaper that a rural road leading to a plot of land in Qormi given to Mark Gaffarena as part of a controversial €1.65 million expropriation deal had been paved with concrete from taxpayers’ money and EU funds.

“This shows the government got its priorities wrong. A few close to the party continue to benefit while those who have been suffering an injustice for decades are disregarded,” shadow justice minister Jason Azzopardi said.

The PN said nearby country roads serving about 120 families that were in dire need of repair did not benefit from the works that Mr Gaffarena benefitted from.

“People like Mr Gaffarena were made millionaires overnight while the farmers living next to the road the government just paved for Mr Gaffarena got nothing,” PN planning spokesman Ryan Callus said.

The PN pointed out that a Transport Malta billboard promoting the funding was removed a day after this newspaper reported the story.

This was done because the work was finished, according to a statement by the Department of Information.

It accused the Opposition of twisting facts saying Mr Gaffarena’s road was one of 27 rural roads to be resurfaced.

The Labour Party said the Opposition should look at its own doings before pointing fingers at the present government.