‘The fields of the Bulebel industrial area should be protected through amended local plans’: PM

Robert Abela promised on Thursday that the government would amend 2006 local plans to protect farmland around the Bulebel Industrial Estate from future development.

In his address to party supporters in Marsaxlokk, the Prime Minister said that just as the government was changing local plans to protect Ħondoq ir-Rummien Bay and Marsascala, it also planned to protect the countryside in the Żejtun industrial area.

Abela’s pledge comes two months after community activist group Wirt iż-Żejtun asked the government to change local plans for the area.

Land around the industrial estate was intended for expansion in the 1980s. It retained that designation when planners updated the local plans in 2006.

In 2010, the land was placed under the responsibility of Malta Industrial Parks (now INDIS) and in late 2015, farmers in the Wied iż-Żrinġ area received eviction notices, giving them a month to leave their land.

The announcements sparked a public outcry and a years-long struggle by Żejtun residents and activists to drop the plan.

In 2018, the government dropped plans to clear the land and a meeting of parliament’s environment and planning committee called for changes to the area’s local plan.

However, that recommendation was never followed.

On Thursday, Abela recalled “the controversy of a few years ago” when the government wanted to expand the industrial area.

‘At the time, Wirt iż-Żejtun had spoken out and started a discussion about whether the country wanted to favor industry over the environment.

“For us, the environment is a priority… and I can today confirm that the local plan for the Bulebel area will be amended to ensure once and for all that there will be no development at the expense of agricultural land,” he said.