Amid calls to the government to save 17,530 square metres of land, at Tal-Marnisi in Marsaxlokk, the Malta Developers Association insists that 'approved rationalisation plans must be respected'
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Saturday, April 1, 2017
Developers insist 2006 rationalisation plans must be ‘honoured’
Chamber of Commerce vice-president Tonio Casapinta dies
The vice-chairman of the Chamber of Commerce, Enterprise and Industry, Tonio Casapinta, died early this morning, aged 68, a spokesman for the chamber confirmed to The Malta Independent.
Mr Casapinta had established the Casapinta Design Group Limited in 1985, and for many years was responsible for the design and build-up of many of Malta's exhibition stands at major international events.
One of his earliest successes was the International Boat Show in London in 1989, which took up 3,000 square metres of space.
He served on various public boards such as the Malta Government Aesthetics Board, the Malta Trade Fairs Corporation and the Malta Society for Arts, Manufacture and Commerce.
He was appointed honorary consul to the Czech Republic in 2002.
Source: Dictionary of Maltese Biographies, Michael J. Schiavone.
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690 Air Malta staff complaints since March 2013
690 Air Malta employees have registered complaints since March 2013, Tourism Minister Edward Zammit Lewis has revealed.
The Minister, who was replying to a parliamentary question tabled before him by Opposition MP Jason Azzopardi, also revealed that the Air Malta board which handled the complaints was composed of three members.
Minister Zammit Lewis said the board does not distinguish between one case and another so it could not be ascertained what each individual case was about.
When contactedby The Malta Independent, both the General Workers Union and the Union of Cabin Crew said the issues raised by the employees did not concern the unions as such but were related to internal matters.
In the meantime the the Tourism Ministry yesterday announced that President Emeritus George Abela is to lead talks on retirement schemes involving Air Malta staff.
Dr Zammit Lewis held a meeting with the Union of Cabin Crew in which he announced that the committee will include the representation of the ministry, the Finance Ministry and the Air Malta management, and will be presided over by Dr Abela.
The aim is to discuss the way forward on retirement schemes to be offered to Air Malta staff at all levels as well as to hold negotiations on a new collective agreement, with June set as a target date.
President Emertius George Abela had been acting as the mediator between Air Malta and the Unions since January 2016.
In July 2016, former ALPA president Dominic Azzopardi, had told The Malta Independent that the former president had been acting as a mediator, but appeared to be representing the Air Malta shareholders rather than the union.
"During meetings, he would always sit on Air Malta's side. He also never requested a meeting with us on our own, and would respond on behalf of Air Malta during meetings. In addition, he was the one who told asked us - how many of us are ready to work abroad? He was also the one who said that there could be people who would be made redundant".
When asked, by The Malta Independent, on the former president's recent appointment, the Union of Cabin Crews and GWU both spoke highly of the work he has done as the mediator of the unions.
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Editorial - Politics: Raising the level of political discourse, and of politicians
It was perhaps merely a footnote to parliamentary proceedings when the House convened earlier this week to debate the Media and Defamation Bill, but there was one MP who provided something of a voice in that particular wilderness that is the political sphere.
That MP was Claudio Grech, who relayed an incident in which his son asked him why MPs could not do anything to help a friend of his who was suffering from a rare and life-threatening illness. What good can Members of Parliament do, he asked, if they are unable help a young kid such as his friend?
Children sometimes have a way of leaving us speechless and struggling for what on the surface appears to be an obvious answer but one which, in reality, is very difficult to provide. Most parents have undoubtedly been there before.
Mr Grech said he tried to explain to his son about the work he and his colleagues do in Parliament, matters that are of little concern to children and which hardly provide an answer to the burning question at hand, and he was stumped for an answer.
That incident, he said forced him to ask himself about what MPs give the most importance to in Parliament. It is sometimes children who shock us into introspection, into searching our souls and asking ourselves some of the most important questions in life. Such, it appears, was the case with Mr Grech.
With such thoughts still on his mind, Mr Grech presumably went to Parliament on Wednesday evening with a bone or two to pick and when his turn came for his intervention on the Media and Defamation Bill, he went decidedly off-topic and provided anyone who was listening with a refreshing take on what politics should, and should not, be about.
He chastised his fellow MPs for the perpetual mudslinging that permeates the country's politics and took them to task for stooping to such tit-for-tat levels where the trading of insults has become the order of the day, instead of seriously debating policies that truly make a difference to people's lives.
Insulting one another from across the House, he said, was easy, but to engage in serious policy debate requires time-consuming study, research and thought. Parliamentary proceedings, he said, have become more of a reality television show than a forum where diverging political forces engage in healthy debate with the mutual and overarching aim of improving the lives of those who elect them.
Such behaviour, which, incidentally, both sides of the House can be accused of, debases the level of political discourse that people should expect from their politicians.
What Mr Grech did was to raise the prospect of a new level of social and political discourse for the country's politicians, to provide a ray of hope for a real ongoing discourse about values and ideologies that transcend those political lines that have been etched in stone for so many decades. But the constant mudslinging and tit-for-tat politics, which appear to have become the norm these days, only serve to obfuscate the real issues that the politics are meant to address.
Parliament must seek to genuinely debate the policy issues that at the end of the day have a very real bearing on people such as the friend of Mr Grech's son. It must continuously seek not only to raise the level of the country's political discourse, but to foster genuine debate amongst politicians on every matter of national importance.
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Malta Developers Association will insist that approved policies should be honoured
The Malta Developers Association will insist that all approved policies should be honoured.
Referring to recent protests against the approval of building schemes in sites known as 'rationalisation areas', the MDA said in a statement that these areas were included in developable areas by means of a decision approved by Parliament in 2006.
While the MDA recognises that the addition of some of these sites to developable areas was a controversial decision, the fact is that a decision taken by Parliament cannot in any manner be rendered null by the Planning Authority's technical committee. On the contrary, the Planning Authority is obliged to seek solutions after leaving people in limbo for so many years.
Since these areas were approved, there were a substantial number of purchases of sites within them, all made in good faith since the areas had been approved as developable by the highest institution of the country.
MDA therefore cannot accept the attitude of the few that are ignoring these facts and expect the state to meddle with citizens' rights by first declaring land as developable and, many years later, abruptly change the status of the same land. This after a lot of money and time was invested in the proposals submitted to the Planning Authority by means of a Planning Control (PC) application.
If there are any particular sites that the State today recognises as ones that should not have been included in the rationalisation areas, the State is obliged to pay damages to the owners who bought the land on the basis of a decision taken by the same State that is now being asked to have second thoughts.
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