Rural pathways leading to Lunzjata Valley, in the limits of Santa Katerina, a hamlet in Rabat, are being given a concrete surface and the Planning Authority says no permits are required.

Law experts: ‘PA is ‘stretching the new rules to the limit’.Law experts: ‘PA is ‘stretching the new rules to the limit’.

Rabat residents who frequently go for walks along these secluded rural passageways tipped off Times of Malta about the works in progress. 

A visit revealed heavy machinery on site. These included milling and rock-cutting equipment as well as ready-mix trucks laying fresh concrete on a wire mesh.

“This area is completely unspoilt and is only used by farmers and some ramblers who frequently visit the 17th century chapel and retreat house there,” a shocked resident said.

“We could not believe what we were seeing when trucks fully loaded with concrete kept coming and going as machinery chipped off the rocks to widen the passageways,” another resident said.

When it went on site following the tip-off, the Times of Malta saw a group of employees from a local contractor working on a two-kilometre-long stretch of rural roads in the middle of the valley.

The works are being done not far from the controversial residence of Transport Minister Ian Borg, who is politically responsible for both road building and the PA.

A Planning Authority spokesman indicated this was a public project funded by the Exchequer. PA officials visited the site and decided there was no need for a permit, he noted.

Trucks loaded with concrete kept coming and going as machinery chipped off the rocks to widen the passageways

“The compliance and enforcement directorate within the Planning Authority has investigated this complaint and it transpired that the works being undertaken do not require notification according to Class 3 of the development notification order,” he said.

When asked to be more specific, the spokesman indicated “Class 3 (ii)”, within the framework of a 2016 legal notice.

This clause lays down that the “formation, laying out, alteration or improvement of roads by government agencies, local councils and other entities appointed thereby” do not require a permit in case of “the widening, improvement or maintenance of an existing road within the highway boundary”.

Planning law experts deemed such justification “stretching the new rules to the limit”, fearing the PA’s “subjective” interpretation of the law could be “flawed”.

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