Dingli residents, farmers and Moviment Graffitti activists have written to Minister Farrugia, Minister Borg and Minister Herrera requesting their immediate intervention to stop the construction of a planned road on fields in Dingli). An urgent request was also made to the Superintendence of Cultural Heritage and the Executive Council of the PA to issue an Emergency Conservation Order for the Late Medieval Church of Santa Duminka and its surroundings in Dingli.

These requests follow the direct action carried out last Friday in Dingli, where Infrastructure Malta turned up with heavy machinery and no warning in its quest to build a road on private fields. In their letter to the Ministers, the farmers, residents and activists raise questions on the necessity for this road.

Having been planned since 1998, no action whatsoever had ever been taken to build the road in question. However, it suddenly appears that the road has become so urgently needed that Infrastructure Malta has decided to send workers and machinery to the site without following the formal process of officially notifying all the relevant landowners, who will be severely impacted by these works since the road would directly cut across their arable fields.

Besides destroying a site of great archaeological importance, the road in question would also be highly detrimental to the livelihood of several of these farmers, who currently till the land and grow crops, and who have owned this land for many years. Moreover, the water reservoirs that currently provide much needed water to irrigate these arable fields are in jeopardy due to this development.

The building of this road will also create pressure for more development in the ODZ areas surrounding the proposed road, as there have already been applications for residences on ODZ in that exact area. Dingli is one of the few remaining rural villages in this country, and the residents want to preserve it as such.

In the light of all this, the farmers, residents and activists demanded:

1)   The immediate issue of an Emergency Conservation Order to protect the Late Medieval Church of Santa Duminka and its surroundings. The site should also be given a Grade 1 Scheduling and a status of a Class A archaeological site, including a scheduled buffer zone around it;

2)   A change in the Local Plan so that this road is removed from the plans due to the fact that it is useless and highly damaging to our cultural heritage, our agriculture and our natural environment.