GozoNews.Com

During a press conference held at the AD office in Sliema, the Chairperson of Alternattiva Demokratika , Dr Harry Vassallo summarised the main proposals of AD’s policy on the reform of the Malta Environmental and Planning Authority.

Dr Vassallo said that “unfortunately a number of controversial decisions taken by MEPA such as the waiving of the EIA requirement for the Ramla il-Hamra and for the Fort Cambridge developments, the extensions to the development zones without conducting a strategic environmental assessment, have completely undermined MEPA’s credibility. A public authority entrusted with such delicate roles cannot risk such slumps in credibility, otherwise we risk a collapse of our regulatory system for both environmental and planning issues.”

Dr Vassallo continued by saying that “for this reason, the reform of MEPA will be one of the keystones of our electoral manifesto and will be one of the basic conditions of any coalition agreement which will eventually be negotiated between Alternattiva Demokratika and any one of the two major political parties”.

Ralph Cassar, AD spokesperson for the environment said that “AD will work for the splitting up of MEPA into two separate authorities; one authority will be responsible for environmental protection and the other authority will be responsible for development control. In this way the problems created by MEPA’s current conflicting roles will be solved”.

Ralph Cassar said that “one of MEPA’s biggest constraints is the fact that more often than not MEPA’s work is hampered by governmental interference intended solely to protect the governing party’s electoral interests and for this reason AD is proposing to place the two authorities which will result from the splitting up of MEPA under the direct responsibility of two different permanent parliamentary committees. In this way the autonomy of these two authorities will be safeguarded”. Cassar guaranteed that this reform would not increase bureaucracy and expenses.

“Our policy on the reform of MEPA also includes a reform in the way in which the members of the boards governing the two different authorities are chosen. We are totally against having political appointees on the boards of public bodies. In fact we will make sure that the constitution of the boards of the authorities responsible for both Development Planning and for Environmental Protection reflect Maltese society and we will make sure that environmental NGOs, local councils, and civil society in general are adequately represented. The chairperson and the secretary of the boards of these two authorities will have to be technically competent in the subjects concerned and will be chosen according to a strict, pre-defined set of criteria. Technocrats will replace the representatives of the political parties. In this way we will ensure that any decision taken by these boards will be justified on technical grounds and will respect the interests of Maltese society as a whole”, added Dr Vassallo.

This proposals will be discussed with representatives from civil society in order to get their feedback and also include their ideas in AD’s proposals.

“Today it is even more evident that only with Alternattiva Demokratika in parliament can Malta hope to stop this building rampage which is afflicting these islands and which risks despoiling it of all its natural beauty to convert it into a concrete jungle which will only serve to fatten the pockets of a handful of contractors” concluded Dr Vassallo.