Qala mayor Paul Buttigieg described a Labour Party pledge as “another step towards saving Hondoq ir-Rummien”, with the manifesto pledge meaning that both major parties have guaranteed that they will protect the site if they are elected.
“The last 20 years have been a very long journey, consisting of many small steps, towards achieving the goal to save Hondoq from being ruined,” Buttigieg said in a statement.
He said that a PL electoral manifesto pledge is “another big step in the right direction” for this to happen.
The party’s pledge reads: ‘A Labour government has always been clear regarding the safe guarding of Hondoq ir-Rummien. We assure that this zone will not be developed in any way whilst we see that works will be done to make the bay a nicer place so it can offer a better environment for those who visit.’
The pledge followed past statements from the Prime Minister and the Gozo Minister that they did not believe the area should be developed, but who said that their hands were tied when it came to changing the land to an ODZ because of past policy decisions by the PN administrations.
The PN some months ago had said that if elected to buy the area around Ħondoq ir-Rummien back from its private landowners and turn it into a national park.
The news came as a campaign to protect Ħondoq ir-Rummien from potentially massive development intensified, with Qala’s mayor Paul Buttigieg telling The Malta Independent on Sunday last year that while he had been told by Prime Ministers to put his mind at rest on the area, he would not do so before the area was changed back to an ODZ.
The government owns just the small sandy beach and a part of the BBQ area at the bay. The rest was sold off to private owners before being sold on to the current landowners in 2002, while the status of the area was changed from one where it was ODZ and for afforestation to one where “tourism and marine related developments” would be considered by the then-PN administration in 2006.
Subsequently, the new land owners proposed a massive development consisting of turning the area into a port and yacht marina along with a luxury village consisting of a 195 bedroom hotel and 300 apartments.
The development would have meant that more people would live at Ħondoq than there would be in Qala – the Gozitan village just above the picturesque bay.
The development, the renders of which are reproduced above, was refused by the Planning Authority in 2016 after huge protests, but an appeal against that refusal remains ongoing, with the parties having now submitted their final arguments.