Secretary for Transport and Public Works Raimundo do Rosário said yesterday that the government’s urban development plan for “Eastern District 2”, which was published and took effect last week, does not include a proposed reclamation project between the peninsula’s north-eastern coast and Zone A’s north-western coast proposed by the local government during a public consultation on the plan’s draft in 2022 because the central government has still not decided whether to green-light the reclamation.
Rosário made the remarks when replying to lawmakers’ oral interpellations during a plenary session in the legislature’s hemicycle.
According to the plan, which took effect on Tuesday last week after its promulgation in the Official Gazette (BO) the previous day, Eastern District 2 covers the 1.38-square-kilometre Zone A land reclamation area, which is earmarked to have a population of 96,000.
The Eastern District 2 draft urban development plan released for the 2022 public consultation proposed to further reclaim land in the waters between the peninsula’s north-eastern coast and Zone A’s north-western coast. The proposed additional reclaimed area earmarked for green areas would have covered 0.36 square kilometres.
The local government said during the 2022 public consultation that it had requested the central government’s permission for the proposed 0.36-square-kilometre reclamation project. If the central government had green-lighted the project, Eastern District 2 would have covered an area of 1.74 square kilometres.
The Eastern District 2 urban development plan currently in force does not include the proposed 0.36-square-kilometre reclamation project, because of which green areas and those earmarked for other types of public open spaces will only cover 373,719 square metres, a decrease of 47 percent from the 711,000 square metres proposed during the 2022 public consultation.
During yesterday’s plenary session, Rosário noted that as the central government has still not decided whether to green-light the 0.36-square-kilometre reclamation project, the local government could not include it in its Eastern District 2 urban development plan’s final version.
Rosário did not indicate whether the local government would amend its Eastern District 2 urban development plan in the future if the central government did approve the 0.36-square-kilometre reclamation project.
The policy secretary underlined that although the green areas’ size listed by the Eastern District 2 urban development plan is smaller than the one initially proposed, the green areas’ share in relation to the total area in Zone A is still higher than the one in the peninsula.
This map promulgated in the Official Gazette (BO) last week shows green areas listed in the government’s “Eastern District 2” urban development plan.
