{"id":82691,"date":"2026-02-06T11:49:00","date_gmt":"2026-02-06T10:49:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.shopsofmalta.com\/malta\/gravel-used-to-cover-ta-qali-suppressing-grass-growth-pn-says\/"},"modified":"2026-02-06T11:49:00","modified_gmt":"2026-02-06T10:49:00","slug":"gravel-used-to-cover-ta-qali-suppressing-grass-growth-pn-says","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.shopsofmalta.com\/malta\/gravel-used-to-cover-ta-qali-suppressing-grass-growth-pn-says\/","title":{"rendered":"Gravel used to cover Ta\u2019 Qali suppressing grass growth, PN says"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Gravel used to cover Ta\u2019 Qali suppressing grass growth, PN says<\/p>\n<p>The type of gravel that was illegally laid &#8211; through a direct order, without a public call for tenders and without the necessary permits &#8211; at the picnic area in Ta&#8217; Qali is typically used in road construction. Far from improving the area, it is choking the grass and stopping it from growing, the Nationalist Party said Friday.<\/p>\n<p>Worse still, according to an independent report analysing the material dumped in this open space, this road-construction gravel was &#8220;<i>deliberately&#8221;&nbsp;<\/i>spread in a way that prevents natural grass growth, with nothing other than fast-growing, aggressive bamboo able to grow through it.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.independent.com.mt\/articles\/2026-02-05\/local-news\/Momentum-inspection-on-Ta-Qali-gravel-shows-soil-rendered-unsuitable-for-natural-vegetation-6736286987\">The report the PN referred to was carried out by Momentum.<\/a><\/p>\n<p>What was done has caused significant damage to the soil at Ta&#8217; Qali and could permanently transform this highly popular picnic area from a green space into a barren zone where nothing grows, the PN said.<\/p>\n<p>The findings of this report show that what happened at Ta&#8217; Qali &#8211; and which Jason Micallef, Robert Abela&#8217;s Special Delegate, and the Government have continued to defend &#8211; was nothing more than a fiasco from start to finish.<\/p>\n<p>The independent report, announced in recent hours following on-site inspections, did not cost the Maltese public a single cent. This stands in stark contrast to the &euro;310,000 the Government squandered of public funds to import the gravel from Greece and spread it at Ta&#8217; Qali, as well as the additional &euro;9,000 spent to engage yet another expert to assess how to fix the mess the Government itself created.<\/p>\n<p>The Government must now immediately publish the report of this landscaping expert, who is being paid &euro;50 per hour, so that the public can see whether this new report reaches the same conclusions &#8211; and, if so, what concrete steps the Government intends to take to remedy this fiasco.<\/p>\n<p>Beyond the Government&#8217;s extensive self-praise and media advertising about open spaces, it appears that families, young people, and all those who used this much-loved open space &#8211; one of the few that remain in our country &#8211; will have to keep waiting before they can once again see grass flourish in Ta&#8217; Qali.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>RSS Feed Source: Independent Malta <a href=\"https:\/\/www.independent.com.mt\/articles\/2026-02-06\/local-news\/Gravel-used-to-cover-Ta-Qali-suppressing-grass-growth-PN-says-6736287029\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Gravel used to cover Ta\u2019 Qali suppressing grass growth, PN says<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Gravel used to cover Ta\u2019 Qali suppressing grass growth, PN says The type of gravel that was illegally laid &#8211; through a direct order, without a public call for tenders and without the necessary permits&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"false","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2139],"tags":[1850],"class_list":["post-82691","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-malta-news","tag-abatement"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shopsofmalta.com\/malta\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/82691"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shopsofmalta.com\/malta\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shopsofmalta.com\/malta\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shopsofmalta.com\/malta\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shopsofmalta.com\/malta\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=82691"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.shopsofmalta.com\/malta\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/82691\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shopsofmalta.com\/malta\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=82691"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shopsofmalta.com\/malta\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=82691"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shopsofmalta.com\/malta\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=82691"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}