The Sliema Residents Association (SRA) has told The Malta Independent that despite numerous requests to schedule a meeting with the Sliema Local Council, the council has still not met with them.
The Sliema Residents Association had first contacted their local council, as well as their mayor John Pillow, and requested to hold a meeting between the two parties back in May, a spokesperson for the SRA said.
A date was later given, and this meeting was scheduled to take place in July, the spokesperson added. This meeting, however, never took place and despite the SRA’s calls to find a new date soon after the cancellation, they were left in the dark, this newsroom was told.
The latest reminder for this meeting request was sent as recently as Monday morning.
The residents association wants to address several issues, foremost among them being dirt, garbage and noise, as well as the carrying capacity within the locality, as the SRA maintains that present development trends are unsustainable, the association representative said. On this point, the SRA noted that a total of 108 tourism-related development applications have been approved since 2013, with another 10 more hotel applications being processed.
The spokesperson emphasised to this newsroom that carrying capacity is not just a problem for Sliema, nor is it an isolated issue within any particular region(s) in the Islands, as the problem of infrastructure not keeping up with the sharp increase in population is being felt all over the Islands.
“Sliema can’t even cope with the present number of hotels, bars and restaurants, let alone the new ones being proposed. A carrying capacity study would assess how many our infrastructure can support.” For that reason, the SRA deplores the
Sliema Local Council’s reluctance to object to new hotels in the area or to commission a carrying capacity study, the spokesperson said.
“Carrying capacity is the elephant in the room to which all authorities are pretending to be blind about”, the SRA spokesperson said, and “this includes Sliema’s Local Council.” The spokesperson continued that, from their experience, “every authority on the island, including local ones, are pretending that this problem doesn’t exist.”
Furthermore, they also mentioned how Infrastructure Minister, Aaron Farrugia, once “went ballistic” when NGOs urged him to undertake a carrying capacity study with respect to the Maltese Islands.
SRA members have grown very frustrated at this “outrageous” delay for a meeting to be held with the council.
This newsroom has also been attempting to schedule an interview with Sliema mayor, John Pillow, since July of this year. In these past five months, a tentative date was accepted once, before being abandoned after a venue was never confirmed by the mayor. Contact made by this newsroom following this cancellation to reschedule another date went ignored.