Enforcement officers were present in Comino every day in order to ensure that the conditions stipulated at Blue Lagoon were being followed, Tourism Minister Clayton Bartolo said on Monday.
Bartolo was replying to a Parliamentary Question filed by PN MP Albert Buttigieg, wherein Buttigieg asked Bartolo how his ministry was ensuring that the conditions given for the “encroachments” onto Comino’s bays were being followed and whether the ministry could say how many times enforcement inspections were carried out on the island.
In reply, Bartolo said that he was informed that enforcement officers from the Malta Tourism Authority were in Comino “every day, from early in the morning till late in the afternoon in order to ensure that the conditions imposed in Blue Lagoon were being followed.”
The answer was one of several in a host of PQs filed by Buttigieg on Comino.
Bartolo also said in answer to another question that revisions to the site plans of the concessions in Comino were being finalised and that a public call for the concessions was also being finalised and would be published in the coming days.
Comino was the centre of one of the battles of the summer as activists descended on Blue Lagoon particularly to protest about how the bay had been taken over by rampant commercialisation by a few select operators.
The protestors protested against the over-presence of deckchairs all around the bay, which ultimately led to the Tourism Ministry to concede to stop allowing deckchairs to be set up on the small sandy beach in the bay.
In previous concessions, operators could only set up deckchairs if clients asked specifically to rent one, however time and time again the operators instead set up deckchairs across the bay from the very early hours of the morning before any people had even arrived.
It was later revealed that the two operators in Blue Lagoon were an associate of Gozitan mega-developer Joseph Portelli and the brother of Labour Party MEP Josianne Cutajar.
The Tourism Ministry has thus far refused to publish the concession agreements for Blue Lagoon, citing commercial sensitivity as the reason for its refusal.