The government has still not decided whether to charge caravan owners for the Baħar iċ-Ċagħaq enforcement action, which runs into some €40,000.

The caravans at the Baħar ic-Ċagħaq site, which had been illegally occupied for the past decades, were cleared on October 3.

A spokesman for the parliamentary secretary responsible for public land had said that the government was reserving the right of charging the squatters for the cost of the demolition works last October.

When asked about this, Parliamentary Secretary Jason Azzopardi said he was still considering it.

Dr Azzopardi said the department is trying to establish who owned the caravans and the illegal structures that were removed before deciding on whether to bill them. As things stand, the authorities do not have a list of people who should be billed.

The expenses have so far been estimated to hover around the €40,000 mark but the final cost could actually be higher, the said.

The enforcement action formed part of an ongoing campaign against illegal structures on government land.

Bulldozers and other heavy machinery were deployed to the site in an early-morning surprise clearance operation. The caravans that had been removed by owners after they were served with a warning were towed away and the semi-permanent structures demolished.

A spokesman for the association representing the caravan owners, the Safari Camping Club, was sceptical on whether the government would be able to charge caravan owners for the cost of the enforcement action. It would be "very difficult" for the government to draw up a list of the owners, he explained.

He insisted that the association was always against semi-permanent structures on the site in question whereas it had always maintained that the regular, mobile homes had a right to be there once the government had promised that the area would be designated for caravans.

The authorities could have avoided this "needless" expense had they approached the issue gradually and not "come down on the entire campsite in a heavy-handed and roughshod manner aimed at generating media exposure".

The former campsite, he pointed out, is in a worse condition now than before the enforcement action took place. In fact, debris is scattered all over the campsite and facilities developed by the government had been vandalised.