“While Gzira local council spent years debating who should be mayor, all around the locality developments are taking place which will make the quality of life in Gzira more unbearable than ever,” Alternattiva Demokratika chairman Harry Vassallo said.

“The high-rise tower being planned for the Mamo garage site will only be the final nail in the coffin for Gzira residents; the others are the Hilton project, Pender Place, Manoel Island, Tigne, the Crowne Plaza site, and the Townsquare developments in St Julian’s and in Sliema,” Dr Vassallo said. “It is too convenient for the Gzira local council to keep silent because these projects are taking place in other localities,” Dr Vassallo added.

Speaking in Gzira, Dr Vassallo said that Gzira was caught in the middle and would take the major impact of traffic from Madliena, Ibrag, Pembroke, Swieqi, St Julian’s, Ta’ Giorni, and San Gwann and Sliema as it met traffic arriving on the Birkirkara bypass to become enmeshed in the traffic generated from these “unnecessary” projects and from the Mater Dei Hospital.

“In the studies carried out many years ago for the Manoel Island and Tigne projects, it was clearly documented that the link road passing through the residential part of Gzira would not be enough. It was expected that traffic would come to a complete standstill because of the Manoel Island and Tigne projects alone. Since that time these projects have been joined by many others and the Mamo high-rise project will be the final monument to unsustainable development casting its shadow over Gzira,” Dr Vassallo added.

He said that a 40-storey tower in Gzira would double the population density in the locality. “It is as though all of Gzira were to be swept up and placed in a tower reaching up to the clouds.

These proposals are nonsensical in economic terms, they make no sense in planning terms and are evidence that the political class no longer feels an obligation to serve the people from whom they derive authority.”