People's frustration at the construction industry due to bad planning - Sandro Chetcuti

Malta Developers Association president Sandro Chetcuti said on Thursday that the country had “failed at planning” and warned colleagues that the public’s frustration at the construction industry was borne out of this failure.

Addressing the lobby’s annual general meeting, Mr Chetcuti said: “We need to incentivise people to ensure better forward planning. We cannot afford to have all of Malta become Bugibba and Qawra.”

Highlighting the industry’s strength and growth, Mr Chetcuti said that while the last few years had seen the sector move from a recession to an unprecedented boom, growth needed to be sustained or the industry would slip backwards.

He said Maltese developers were ready to compete with anyone but needed to be guaranteed a level playing field. They could not afford to be bogged down in bureaucracy while foreign investors received the red-carpet treatment.

Mr Chetcuti also stressed ongoing frustrations over the “total collapse” of the cultural heritage monitoring system, where developers were enduring long delays because of understaffing at the heritage watchdog.

“You cannot have this amount of construction and still require monitoring to build a washroom on the...