The Malta Environment and Planning Authority has consistently remained silent and has failed to address a request for its help in bringing down an illegal development in execution of what it had itself ordered by an enforcement notice that it issued in 1993. This inertia is the root of another person being subjected to criminal proceedings over which he has no control.

The case concerns the batching plant of Rapa Brothers Co. Ltd situated at Ta’ Xhajma Road in Nadur, Gozo. Mepa had requested the institution of criminal proceedings in relation to illegal developments within the site against its owner and had subsequently issued an enforcement order, for the owner to demolish the illegal development in question. Although being the owner of the land, he was not at the time, nor at present, in material physical possession of the site, as this is illegally occupied by a third party. The owner had been found guilty of the charges against him in 1997 and was ordered to demolish the illegal development under penalty of Lm25 for every day of default.

The owner, being dispossessed of actual material possession of the site, has since been faced with a situation where he is not in a position to execute the order to bring down the illegal development and regularise his position, thereby rendering himself liable for hefty fines and further criminal proceedings for payment and the probability of these fines being converted into imprisonment.

Notwithstanding the fact that, over the past few months, the owner has regularly communicated with Mepa’s chairman, requesting the Authority to demolish the illegal building, and this in line with Mepa’s functions and powers at law, the Authority refuses to proceed. No fewer than nine reminders have been sent, but notwithstanding their acknowledgment by Mepa, they have all remained unanswered.

Mepa’s intransigence to act in accordance with its own enforcement order and its refusal to exercise the functions and powers assigned to it by law instils a lack of faith in such an authority, which is granted wide powers by law in order to ensure that development is in accordance with its guidelines and in line with its own decisions.

The position is all the more serious in this case since Mepa’s inaction is subjecting the owner to criminal proceedings with serious consequences. It leaves the owner with no alternative but to take the law into his hands and enforce the order, but the police have not afforded him police assistance.

This injustice clearly obliges one to ask why Mepa is lying dormant on this enforcement, why is it not enforcing its own orders and also the criminal courts decree? Whose interests are coming first in this issue? Why should the owner be forced to break the law in order to comply with another law?