The Dominican Order has defended plans to build a school on agricultural land but is ready to consider any “realistic proposal” for an alternative site.
Provincial Fr Frans Micallef said St Albert the Great College, a school run by the Order, was “unjustly implicated” in the outside development zone controversy over a planned university at Żonqor point in Marsascala.
The Order plans to relocate the college out of its cramped Valletta premises to a stretch of agricultural land in Għaxaq.
He insisted the two projects could not be compared, since the Għaxaq land had been earmarked for educational development 10 years ago.
But Fr Micallef said the Order was aware of the environmental destruction over the years and was ready to consider any “realistic proposal made by the government for an alternative site, preferably in the south”.
“The [Għaxaq] site was chosen after a two-year evaluation exercise with the planning authority of some 20 alternative sites,” he said. The Malta Environment and Planning Authority had concluded the Għaxaq site would cause least environmental damage.
The site was chosen after a two-year evaluation exercise
The college premises in Valletta do not satisfy the basic space requirements at law. This spurred the Order 15 years ago to start seeking a site for a new school in the south.
Fr Micallef said St Albert the Great College has been operating as a non-profit educational institute since 1948. “The investment the Province plans to make in the college is a social project that will benefit the whole of the population.”
The use of agricultural land by a Church institution came under fire after Archbishop Charles Scicluna publicly opposed the “rape” of Żonqor in Marsascala when government plans for a private university there became public.
Critics pointed out the irony in Mgr Scicluna’s stand against the university project while a Church institution wanted to build a school on agricultural land. The Archbishop subsequently urged the Church school to seek alternative locations, though he pointed out that the land had long been earmarked for educational development.