From Mr A. Buhagiar

Some years ago, I bought an old villa in order to demolish it and re-build it again since it has always been my wife’s wish and mine.

On the contract of sale it was written that to make structural arrangements I had to have the approval of the landlords. When I went personally to the landlords’ office in Valletta in order to inform them about my plans they neither said yes nor no. My architect sent a letter to their architect and again we had no reply on this correspondence.

However, I later discovered that the landlords were making objections to MEPA against my application. I became aware of their objections during a court hearing. Despite all this I received the approval from MEPA to start work on the villa I had bought. When work commenced, soil from the back garden was removed, the old villa was demolished, there was the excavation process and the basement was built as well as half of the ground floor. All this process took two-and-a-half years and during that period nothing happened.

To my surprise, when the roof was about to be completed, the landlords opened a case against me in court. At that time the building works were at a stage when they couldn’t be kept on hold. The work continued and when completed, I moved in together with my family.

In this civilised democratic country, what right do landlords have to negotiate property bought for pettiness sake to threaten people in this way by taking advantage of ambiguous and strange clauses that nobody understands?

This is nothing but organised threat that prevents me from taking action. This kind of threat doesn’t affect only to me as it has also happened to other people. Now that the local plan has changed for the benefit of the local people, hopefully the outcome will in line with the new rules.

A. Buhagiar

MARSASCALA