I would like to give my opinion regarding the development proposed by the Gozo Ministry to relocate the Court of Justice in Pjazza Assedju 1551.

As the name itself states, this is a square (pjazza) so it had never been planned for any type of building and, as we were told before we bought our residential property over here, it has been passed from the church to the joint office with the aim of remaining an open space.

We are still very disappointed to note that the ministry found time to answer the news item alerted by Alternattiva Demokratika in the newspapers but didn’t find time to meet with us residents.

We even went to the ministry in Victoria to get some information but nobody would give us any, and despite the fact that we even left our phone number, nobody called us back.

Another strange thing is that when we went to Victoria local council to enquire about the council’s opinion on the matter nobody told us anything. The administration staff just asked us to go back to the ministry since they told us that they were not allowed to give us any information.

The ministry knows more than us that the original plans were to build the Court of Justice in the big car park near the bus terminus where this area is about twice or more bigger than Pjazza l-Assedju 1551. There is also much less danger to the building because it is a hundred metres away from other buildings. While in our case, Pjazza l-Assedju 1551 is surrounded by businesses and residential buildings less than 11 metres away.

We were also told that the development in the parking near the bus terminus was abandoned because of the type of land (clay) underneath. In the case of Pjazza l-Assedju, it is even worse since some of the buildings near this area had to be pulled down because of the sliding land.

So we are sure that this proposed development would damage the surrounding properties. I hope somebody at the Prime Minister’s office will take a good look at our situation because this goes against the so pre-election promise of an eco Gozo.

All the neighbours that we have spoken to, seem to share the same opinion but a lot of them don’t want to write their names in the newspaper etc, because they are afraid of being blacklisted. Are we back to the early 1980s? After all, as European citizens we have to learn that expressing a concern or opinion is a fundamental human right.

Francis Spiteri

Victoria