That God moves in mysterious ways is widely accepted, but understanding some of MEPA’s decisions is a much harder task altogether.

I remember when a young, married couple were expecting their first child and MEPA saw fit to blackmail them by threatening to withhold their permit to update an old property with a modern kitchen and bathroom, if they did not replace a perfectly sound metal garage door with a wooden one. This would have cost the couple something like Lm800, which they could ill afford at the time.

The work that needed to be done was all internal, without any external modifications, yet MEPA felt it had to interfere, with the excuse of embellishing St Dominic Square in Rabat with a wooden garage door, at someone else’s expense.

Just three miles down the road, in the village of Attard, MEPA apparently found no objection to the demolition of villas, barely 20 years old, to build compact apartments (slums), changing the character of the area radically, and certainly not embellishing it.

When there are so many old buildings crying out to be redeveloped into modern homes, surely it makes no sense to grant permission to pull down sound, quality properties and replace them with high density apartments. But of course MEPA knows best.

With hindsight, I believe that MEPA is not such an improvement on the old ministerial dictat.

Victor Spiteri

ATTARD