A tender has been issued for a team to oversee the long-awaited breakwater at Qrejten in Marsaxlokk, offering a ray of hope that the project will come to fruition.
The Contracts Department recently issued a call for a full-time project management and site supervision team, which closes on January 28.
Plans to build a new 110-metre breakwater and raise the height of the existing one were unanimously approved by the Planning Authority board in May 2017.
The move, small though it may be, will be welcomed by fishermen in the area, who have long complained that their livelihoods are constantly threatened by high waves battering their boats during inclement weather.
It will increase the number of days during which vessels can access the port. Additional sheltered berthing areas will also be provided.
This project will also improve the fishermen’s safety and working conditions, and decrease overall coastal damage caused by strong currents within the bay.
The project had been promised back in 2009, when the government allocated money for studies on the breakwater. In 2010, frustrated by the lack of progress, Marsaxlokk fishermen threatened to blockade the bay over unrealised government promises, which included the breakwater.
Read: Winds wreck Marsalforn waterpolo pitch as Otters call for breakwater
A year later, then minister Austin Gatt again vowed major infrastructural works to upgrade maritime assets, including a €10 million refurbishment of the Marsaxlokk breakwater.
Still nothing happened and in 2014, the government again promised to make the project a reality, allocating about €6 million, and vowing that it would be completed in that legislature.
Some 300 boats are moored in the idyllic Marsaxlokk Bay and, while the larger vessels often raise anchor and head towards the Grand Harbour in rough weather, smaller boats have no choice but to face the waves and wind head-on.
This project will be part-financed by the European Union and the government of Malta, as part of the Maritime and Fisheries Operational Programme 2014-2020.
The tender document specifies that the construction period would be 15 months, with the contracting entity to be Infrastructure Malta.