Saving the Valley of the Spring

Some 60 years ago my mother used to occasionally send me to visit her sister at Wied il-Għajn (as we called it then – the gentrified Marsascala still had to become popular).

The village was a small one then – it was not even well served by public transport from Valletta and sometimes you had to catch a connecting bus from Bormla at Żabbar.

Coming from noisy Hamrun, I marvelled at the peace and quiet. A passing car would be so unusual it caused you to stop and stare.

The highlight of the visit would be when my uncle took me out in his boat to fish. It was a small boat, just like the many boats you see today. We never made it, for by the time we came near to the structure known as Il-Bajda w IsSewda I would already be asking to be taken back.

That was Wied il-Għajn in the 1950s. A small quiet village where everybody was a parttime fisherman and had a small boat just like my uncle ‘s which one could pull from the quay.

Then everything changed and ‘progress’ came in. The village core which I knew at the time expanded in all directions especially when the new approach road was controversially carved out enabling people to skip Zabbar as a whole. Then Ta’ Monita was built and St Thomas Bay followed. And Jerma Palace with, as its name suggests, its Libyan connection, now left in ruins in a dangerous heap.

The present controversy on a yacht marina in this narrow and winding bay regards the attempt by those in favour to speed up the speed of progress, if that is what it is.

I note that while yacht marinas have taken over some quite narrow bays, such as Msida, with no protest registered at that time, other wide bays have been spared. Such as Xemxija, for instance. Birżebbuġa has the nearby Freeport today to worry about, but no yacht marina. In Cottonera, which is not so narrow, agreement was reached for all private boats to be allocated space. Maybe I’m wrong but I do not remember seeing some similar placatory offer for Wied ilGħajn.

The concept, in the fragmentary way it has been drawn up, offends the sense of equity we should have in a democratic society.

Quite simply, the bay is too narrow to put in a yacht marina.

It is very true that there is a need for more yacht marinas, as evidenced by the many who have to store away their yachts in fields far removed from the sea whereas a yacht marina would offer them the possibility of taking the boat out in the middle of winter if the weather allows.

To insist this yacht marina has to be there without at least looking at alternative sites is arrogance personified. To justify the concept ‘because today many have boats and yachts’ is insufferable especially if you do not come up with alternative accommodation for those boats which will be squeezed out.

This is not how public policy ought to be driven. In this case, private interests are running the show to the detriment of public interests, thus putting paid to how public policy should be run, especially by a government that declares itself to be socialist.

A government that pursues the interests of the few soon loses the reason for its existence.