POPP Dawgs Day Cancelled Over Parking Permit Refusal As Gżira Mayor Was Allegedly ‘Bullied’ By Neighbour
POPP has had to cancel its event this Friday because the Gżira Local Council refused a permit application for a single parking spot.
The spot was intended to make way for a food truck in front of their shop for the day.
The owners of POPP, who were looking forward to celebrating the shop’s fourth birthday, took to Facebook to share their frustration, alleging that the local council “gave in to the bullying by a neighbour who’s been harassing us since we opened”.
“This neighbour […] is also a Labour Party insider and local council candidate, so he uses his connections and influences to get what he wants.”
The event was set to take place this Friday with a hot dog truck of led by the shop’s chef Wayne.
POPP further called out Gżira mayor Conrad Borg Manché for refusing to meet with them and for “repeatedly disregarding [their] attempts to communicate”.
The local council justifies their refusal of the permit application by saying that “these permits may only be issued as one-offs and cannot be issued regularly”, to which the owners have said is “ridiculous and illogical” as this is “the fourth time in three years [they’re] applying for such a permit”.
The owners also expressed that “it’s infuriating and disheartening when you are not allowed to conduct business in an honest way and that the authorities that are meant to protect your rights enable the bullying against you to keep their political buddies happy.”
Meanwhile, Manché commented on the establishment’s post on Instagram:
“As the Gżira Mayor I was elected to safeguard the Gżira Residents, and when it comes to such events we have been receiving lots of complaints from residents, and rightly so. The situation in Gzira when it comes to noise, traffic congestion, and parking is already at stake.”
“Apart from this, we receive a lot of requests in relation to similar events and if we had to accept all permits, Gzira will become one big Party Land, which from my end is unacceptable. I am not against businesses, but we have to respect our residents too who unfortunately are already facing a lot of inconveniences and a high level of both noise and air pollution coming from traffic congestion and construction. About the meeting sorry I couldn’t make it.”
Speaking to Lovin Malta, Manché maintained that his decision was made with the wellbeing of the residents in mind. When asked about the allegation that the particular neighbour who took issue with this permit has close connections with the Labour Party, the mayor stated that this is “irrelevant”.
As a reply to Manché, POPP stood by its original argument saying that all he had to do was “accept a meeting that we’ve been asking for over a month, to get to know us and understand what we do, instead, you chose to please him.”
“You knew there was a situation happening. The area where our shop is and the nature of the event does not cause any noise or congestion. Apart from safeguarding residents, your role is to manage the locality, which includes the businesses in it.”
Do you think the mayor made the right decision?