A tender for the widespread regeneration of the Marsa Sports Complex is currently on hold after the government instructed Parliament’s National Audit Office Accounts committee not to meet before the upcoming EP elections, the Malta Independent on Sunday is informed.
The Marsa Sports Complex is a sprawling area which various sports, including rugby, athletics, and cricket, call home. While there have been isolated projects announced for the area, including upgrades to the athletics track, and – more recently announced – a new complex which will house Olympic standard facilities for squash and weightlifting. A tract of land next to the complex, currently used as a car park, was also recently handed over to Marsa FC for the construction of a football ground.
The overall regeneration of the sports complex however still seems to be in the pipeline, and it is a project that the Parliamentary Secretary for Youth, Sport and Voluntary Organisations Clifton Grima is reportedly very enthusiastic to push through and see works start on. However, the project will have to wait after instructions were passed down from the government that the National Audit Office Accounts committee in Parliament, where the tender has to be tabled, should not meet before the upcoming elections.
The National Audit Accounts parliamentary committee is chaired by Deputy Prime Minister and Health Minister Chris Fearne, with MPs Robert Abela and Alex Muscat members for the government and MPs Mario De Marco and Beppe Fenech Adami members for the Opposition.
It last convened on 11 December 2018, when Tourism Minister Konrad Mizzi faced the committee to discuss the controversial deal that the government was looking to secure with Corinthia over prime land in St George’s Bay, St Julian’s.
Asked by this newspaper when the committee will next be convening, Chris Fearne replied that “the House of Representatives is currently in its Easter Recess. Once Parliament reconvenes a date for the next NAO committee meeting will be set”.
This newsroom also sent questions to Clifton Grima, asking whether the tender had been tabled in front of the aforementioned committee and, if not, when it will be tabled; when it is the tender planned to be issued to the public; and what form the tender will take in terms of details and stipulations.
Grima, however, skirted around these questions in his reply, writing simply that “the tender will follow public procurement regulations which will be scrutinized by the department of contracts and then published on Epps.”
The regeneration of the Marsa Sports Complex has long been a promise, and it featured in the Labour Party’s 2013 electoral manifesto wherein it was written that a Labour government would “seriously look at the Marsa Sports Complex to see how it can be modernised and how the space can be maximised in the interest of several sportive disciplines”.
Labour’s 2017 manifesto meanwhile promised that infrastructural improvement at the sports complex will improve through the completion of a gymnastics complex on site.