Why has a Middle Eastern construction company been brought in to do this?

I was speaking to an architect friend this morning and he pointed out something that should have been obvious to me at the outset.

Why has the government signed this deal with a Middle Eastern construction company? The Middle Eastern construction company is not going to run the university. It can only build the campus.

That’s a job any number of Maltese operators can do.

So what is the added value that the Sadeen Group is bringing to the table? Once the university campus is built, exactly how is it going to be involved? I’ve never heard of a university run as a business by a construction and hotel development company.

Hotel development – ah, there you have it. That’s a big part of Sadeen Group’s business in the Middle East. The plans for the university campus include a 1,000-bed ‘dormitory quarter’ that strikes me as being a hotel by any other name.

And once that hotel is built in the ‘sawt’, a precedent will have been set and Sandro Chetcuti will get his permit for HIS hotel in the ‘sawt’. No wonder his Malta Developers Association was the first to rush to congratulate the government on this deal.