Letters • February 15 2004

Stop the desecration of Fort St Angelo

Ian Campbell
St Julians

I read with horror that Fort St Angelo is to be further tidied up. The political agenda followed by MEPA has no regard for or expertise in conversation, no understanding of ecology and little sense of fitness of place.
The work carried out so far has destroyed evidence of several periods important in Maltese history.
When will someone in authority realise that their mindset of only one period in history being important, will bring condemnation by your children, by destroying important parts of their heritage.
Fort St Angelo has evidence of the customs and practices of many ages both before and after the Knights.
All evidence of early mooring methods are being buried in concrete, all evidence of the industrial revolution, and the part played by Malta in the expansion of sea-going trade as a coaling station.
The list is endless, but does not even appear in the MEPA Agenda. How many people know that the school records of the last century were dumped in Fort St Angelo and have now been destroyed.
It is not too late to stop all work and employ qualified people to guard your heritage. It is so easy to use rock cutting machines bulldozers and then to cover everything in concrete. It is lazy, it is cheap, it is short-sighted, and to quote an anonymous graffiti artist on a bus shelter in Msida "it is your world in which we grow, and we will grow to hate you."