Elderly people and families living in a popular Sliema area expressed frustration on Friday, as they spent the morning of a public holiday listening to construction noise.

Although legislation prohibits the continuation of construction works on Sundays or public holidays, the Building Regulations Office (BRO) issued a permit for the works to continue, police said, overriding those regulations.  

As a result, residents living on the corner of Pace Street and St Anthony Street spent the better half of their Sette Giugno public holiday nursing a headache due to construction noise. 

Developers of the site have until the end of next week to complete building works before they must stop for the summer months: the two streets both feature on a list of tourist areas where construction works will be prohibited between June 15 and September 30.

The ongoing works were resulting in an "inhuman" living situation, resident Reuben Brimmer said.

"Whenever you take a sick day off work, you know you will still be surrounded by construction noise," he said.

"To add insult to injury, the building site is otherwise abandoned - so much for urgency of works," he said. "There is just one very noisy digger, waking up and disturbing a whole neighbourhood," he said. 

The only respite residents in the area had, Mr Brimmer said, was on Sundays and public holidays. But it seemed authorities had taken that away too, Mr Brimmer said. 

Sliema mayor frustrated

His sentiment was shared by many other Sliema residents, according to mayor Anthony Chircop.

The local council, he noted, could not make developers halt works and struggled to get information from the BRO, since they were often "not receptive" to requests for information.

Elderly people were trapped because they found it hard to move out but could not stand the construction noise, he added.

The BRO declined to comment when contacted. 

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