Infrastructure ministry suspends application for Marsaskala ferry landing area, refuses to answer questions

The transport ministry breached the legal limit to provide a response to a Freedom of Information request filed by The Shift, refusing to provide relevant documentation about the use of piecemeal emergency permits and unapproved planning applications to rush through an €18 million promenade regeneration project.

The Shift’s FOI request, filed on 31 October, revolved around Transport Malta’s (TM) use of emergency permits to cover additional works on the promenade, an approach which infrastructure and transport minister Chris Bonett refuses to explain.

Besides requesting a copy of the emergency permits issued by TM and any related documents, this newsroom also requested any contracts, invoices, receipts, or any other financial documents attesting to payments made to the contractors carrying out these emergency works. Bonett also remains tight-lipped on how these contractors were selected.

According to the FOI Act, any authority that receives an FOI request is obliged to respond within 20 working days with either an approval, a request for extension, or a rejection. As of publication time, the authority is five days over the limit and is yet to acknowledge the request.

As for the two planning applications which were filed by Infrastructure Malta (IM), PA/06645/25 covered the “change of use from quay area below promenade to a ferry landing waiting area and construction of access ramp” while PA/06646/25 covers “dredging works at Marsaskala Bay.”

To add further chaos to the already messy implementation of the project, the application to build a ferry landing area has now been suspended at the request of IM’s architect, raising further questions about whether the public ferry that the transport minister is pushing for is actually going to materialise.

The planning application for dredging works remains under evaluation, with a PA case officer yet to decide on whether to recommend it for approval or refusal.

Infrastructure Malta has not issued any public statements explaining why its architect suspended its plans to redevelop the quay area below the promenade into a ferry landing area.

Marsaskala Residents’ Network has been vocal in its opposition to the proposed regeneration project, which the group believes merely serves as a sweetener in exchange for the full-blown commercialisation of their locality.

On Wednesday evening, the residents’ group issued a statement condemning the demolition of a row of arches on the promenade, with activists accusing IM of “rushing the project through at all costs”. The agency claimed that the arches were being demolished because “they posed a danger to the public.”

Separately, Partit Momentum had also filed an FOI request for more information about the promenade regeneration project.

“The secrecy the government is maintaining over this project is unacceptable. Pushing forward a major infrastructure project like this, in the heart of a residential bay, without publishing studies on the environmental, social, and traffic impact is irresponsible,” secretary general Mark Camilleri Gambin says in a statement issued by the party.