The road to Ramla Bay Hotel, in Mellieħa, was widened by encroaching on virgin land but no permit was sought even though planning laws clearly lay down such a procedure is a must in these cases.

The project, by State agency Infrastructure Malta, was carried out weeks after the same entity was under the spotlight over its controversial decision to forge ahead to widen Tal-Balal Road and the Ħal Farruġ junction even before a planning permit had been issued. In the latter cases, the entity opted to “sanction” the works at a later stage.

The latest case came to light at the start of this month through a parliamentary question Nationalist MP Edwin Vassallo asked Transport Minister Ian Borg.

It transpired that an unquantified tract of garigue land along Triq ir-Ramla, in the limits of Mellieħa, had been expropriated to widen the country road leading to the hotel, which in recent years has been expanded.

The minister did not give details on how much was paid to acquire the land, saying expropriation talks with the Lands Authority were still under way.

Tract of garigue land along Triq ir-Ramla had been expropriated

According to Legal Notice 211 of 2016, the widening of an existing road does not require a full development permit as long as “it does not entail additional undeveloped land outside the planned or existing highway boundary”. However, publicly-available records on the Planning Authority website show that no development application was filed by Infrastructure Malta for such works to take place.

In contrast, a project carried out last September by the same agency, albeit on a much smaller scale, to remove a bottleneck at Triq t’Alla u Ommu, in the limits of Naxxar, was only done once a full permit was in hand.

In this case, works affected a stretch of just 50 metres.

Asked for a clarification, an agency spokesman justified the project at Triq ir-Ramla on the grounds that part of the road had become too narrow for safe access to the hotel, especially in emergency situations. He noted that widening the road would allow fire engines and ambulances to drive with ease.

However, no reply was given on how much land was expropriated for the project and whether a planning application had been filed.

Instead, the spokesman re-marked that “to resolve this hazard, the dilapidated rubble walls on the sides of this road were reconstructed in a recessed position, to improve its alignment”.