From Mr and Mrs S. Galea Vincenti

Din l-Art Helwa’s very commendable recent public efforts to help safeguard the country’s built heritage (The Times editorial, 9 November), and the commendations of the highest in the land that the press help foster people’s pride in the island’s rich cultural heritage, are taken with more then a pinch of salt by the likes of us plebs.

This NGO remained steadfastly deaf to our several months-long appeals to help us protect the extensive, well-documented underground war-time (and other) heritage at Hamrun.

The same can unfortunately be said of Heritage Malta and the Superintendence of Cultural Heritage. We have kept copies of all e-mails, letters and other documentation sent to these august bodies.

All the war-time heritage underneath High Street Hamrun (and elsewhere for that matter) now faces a very uncertain future thanks to the convenient precedent that was created when a DCC permit PA/05495/02 was approved, allowing the excavation to build a commercial basement and drainage system, of ground underneath which lie war-time and other heritage that is clearly protected by the Cultural Heritage law of Malta.

The local barbari were, in other words, allowed to succeed where foreign barbarians failed.

Sergio & Doreen Galea Vincenti

HAMRUN