New tender confirms Gozo Channel premises leased in 2019 for €63,000 a year remains unused

A private building leased by Gozo Channel in Mgarr, Gozo, for €63,000 a year to be used as its headquarters remains unused for five years after its rental.

The building, a former supermarket known as Ta’ Miema, is still under construction. A new tender issued a few days ago by the state ferry company calls for tiling, gypsum, and mechanical and electrical works, estimated to cost around €750,000.

This tender was issued for the third time, with the first two, issued in 2022, cancelled.

According to the tender, the work will take many more months to complete after adjudication, meaning the building leased in 2019 will not be used until 2025.

While work on the building has been progressing at a snail’s pace over the past five years, with the company forking out hundreds of thousands of euro to demolish part of the rented building and rebuild it due to severe structural defects, its owners, Joseph Hili from Xewkija and his two children, continue to receive €5,250 a month from Gozo Channel.

Gozo Channel chairman Joe Cordina, appointed in 2013, counts the Hili’s and their company, A&J Hili ta’ Miema Ltd, among the private clients of his auditing firm Joe Cordina & Associates.

Speaking to The Shift on condition of anonymity, senior Gozo Channel officials said that the Ta’ Miema works are a scandal of the first order, and it would be interesting if the NAO, and possibly the police, started investigating the project more closely.

The former supermarket building, situated in Triq ix-Xatt, Mgarr, was leased by Gozo Channel in 2019 through a ten-year contract. It was supposed to be used as the new company’s headquarters since 2020.

Yet following the signing of the contract, Gozo Channel discovered that the premises had severe structural defects, which required parts to be demolished and expensive concrete piles to be drilled into the ground to stabilise them.

It is unclear whether any architects had tested the premises before Gozo Channel entered into this expensive lease agreement.

It is estimated that, so far, Gozo Channel has spent at least a million on works on its leased building, and hundreds of thousands more are needed to complete the project.

The lease contract expires in 2029. However, in some still unpublished amendments to the contract, it is understood that Gozo Channel and the lessors agreed to extend the agreement due to defects in the building found after its signing.

According to Gozo Minister Clint Camilleri, the lessors agreed to lease their premises to the state entity for another 18 months “free of charge”.

Gozo Channel could have sued the lessors, but Chairman Joe Cordina found ‘a solution’ for the agreement to proceed.

All this is happening as the state company has been posting record deficits year in and year out.