Environment Minister George Pullicino said yesterday he will be moving legislative amendments to further improve transparency in the Malta Environment and Planning Authority (Mepa) as well as to strengthen law enforcement.
He was speaking during the debate in Parliament on the financial estimates of the authority.
At the opening of the debate Mr Pullicino said that, over the past year, the authority's complaints unit was revamped. Over the 12 months it received 3,800 complaints and 83 per cent were tackled within a short time. The Development Control Commission (DCC) processed four per cent more files than in the previous year and the number of decisions had increased by three per cent.
The Major Projects Unit was kept busy not only thanks to many private projects but especially owing to public projects using EU structural funds.
Roderick Galdes, opposition spokesman on Mepa, said there was clearly a need for reform of the planning process, given the constant complaints against Mepa.
The merger of the former Planning Authority and the Environment Department had not been beneficial for the environment. This could be seen from the fact that Malta had been accused of too many infringements of EU environment directives, the highest in the EU among the new member states. Development planning and the environment were contradictory to each other and needed to be governed by separate entities. Only in Malta had the two been merged.
The Labour MP referred to the resignation of Mepa deputy chairman Catherine Galea earlier yesterday over a development at Sta Marija Estate. He wondered how in many other cases in the past, no one had resigned, particularly after decisions by the Planning Directorate were overturned by the board for no clear reasons. The proposed Ramla l-Hamra development was a case in point. That development had only been stopped thanks to the strength of public opinion.
Mr Galdes said an example of how Mepa was lacking transparency was in how life was made difficult for Joe Falzon, the auditor tasked to oversee Mepa operations. Another example was the way the development areas were extended 18 months ago, with decisions having been taken in very strange ways without expert input .
The Labour MP said Mepa was weak in law enforcement. Far too much abusive development was being sanctioned. Abuses needed to be nipped in the bud, before reversing them became difficult. And it was not enough that in the past year Mepa was only involved in six significant direct actions (removal of illegal buildings).
He referred to the SmartCity development and warned that care should be taken to ensure there was no negative impact on the environment and the building industry. Unfortunately, a surplus of building stock was not leading to lower prices. New development was actually stimulating more development. And Mepa tariffs, bank guarantees and the cost of new measures were being passed on to home buyers. For example, revenue from charges for parking schemes was not being used to ease the parking problem.
Mr Galdes also hit out at promotions for "blue-eyed boys" in the authority.
He also asked how one of the Appeals boards had not taken a decision in a year. Clearly, he said, many of the people there were not suitable and were political appointees.
He also touched on quarries and insisted that sufficient monitoring was needed when debris was dumped in them and, once the quarries were filled, they should be rehabilitated.
Joe Brincat, who is the opposition representative on the Mepa board, said there should be transparency in Mepa, but applicants for development permits should also present the authority with full and proper information about their developments. He strongly felt that all those who made false declarations should be held to account. And law enforcement should be strict and uniform.
Dr Brincat insisted that the DCC boards enjoyed authority delegated by the board, and they therefore should follow the policies which the board laid down. To do otherwise harmed the public image of the authority.
The Labour MP stressed that, in issuing permits, care should be taken by the authority to respect third party rights. That applied not only to excavation right next to people's properties, but also issues such as windows overlooking other houses.
He also called for better studies before high rises were allowed. Some localities were clearly unsuitable for high rises.
Concluding, he referred to environmental issues and expressed fears over a waste mountain of plastic bottles. He also asked if the CVA scheme in Valletta had reduced, or actually raised, the number of cars going into the city. Before, cars used to be parked there all day. Now they came and went with more frequency, and caused more pollution.
Joe Falzon (PN) welcomed the new construction site regulations and the new rules on better hoarding round building sites. He also welcomed the assistance being given for the restoration of timber balconies. He insisted that external building works should not be stopped until they were finished, because they otherwise gave a shabby appearance to the environment. Like Dr Brincat, Mr Falzon insisted that developers needed to respect the rights of neighbours.
The Nationalist MP called for better regulation on the transfer of properties which were not covered by development permits, so as to better safeguard the buyers.
Winding up, Mr Pullicino pointed out that in this legislature Mepa had extended its protection to 21 per cent of Malta's land mass, which was close to the EU average. Mepa worked on management plans on four nature reserves with NGOs notably the National Park in the north which was almost five times as big as Valletta.
The minister thanked NGOs for keeping the environment at the top of the national agenda.
He said Mepa was doing useful work on monitoring air quality and it was significant that thanks to government efforts, especially with regard to the quality of fuel, air quality had improved in all localities.
This government, Mr Pullicino said, had had the guts to take the decisions which were needed for Malta to have a modern waste management system. As a result Malta did not have the sort of problems which Naples had, for example. The government, he said, was aware of the potential problem over the disposal of plastic bottles and as a result was launching a scheme with the bottlers for collection of those bottles. The Sant' Antnin plant could process 14 tons of plastic an hour, while the increase in plastic bottles was estimated at six tons per day.
Mr Pullicino said the investigation of infringements did not mean that directives had actually been violated. Nor did it mean that Malta would suffer penalties. The infringements alleged to have been committed by Malta were a very small percentage of those in the EU, and they were decreasing.
As for transparency, he said it was only Nationalist governments which had introduced transparency and consultation in land use and planning issues. In terms of legislation moved by this government, whenever the Mepa board decided to overturn a decision by the Planning Directorate, it had to put its reasons in writing. Never, before this PN government was elected, were all Mepa policies and documents available on the internet. Under Labour, only the architects concerned would have had access to plans. Now everybody could see all plans on computer!
Indeed, in the next few days he would move amendments for even more transparency and access to Mepa information on large as well as general development applications. These amendments followed extensive consultations with NGOs and all interested parties.
It was also the PN government which set up the audit office within Mepa. Over the past three years Mepa took 21,700 planning decisions. It received 1,995 complaints of which the auditor decided that only 278 deserved investigation.
Mr Pullicino referred to disagreements between the Mepa auditor and the board which centred on the investigating officer. He said that the matter had led to the auditor stopping operations. The Mepa board had then invited the Ombudsman to intervene and he had proposed a solution, now approved by all sides, whereby the investigating role of the auditor would be handled by the Office of the Ombudsman.
Turning to vacant housing, Mr Pullicino said that, according to the census, there were 53,000 vacant dwellings in Malta, 27 per cent of the total. But this was not a problem unique to Malta. Portugal had 30 per cent, Greece, 35 per cent. In Malta 20 per cent of the vacant dwellings were holiday homes and another 25 per cent were in a state of disrepair.
What was especially positive was that now 60 per cent of building was actually redevelopment and 40 per cent was on unbuilt land. Had Labour had its way when the development zones were revisited last year, more land would actually have been committed for building, even though the MLP tried to give the opposite impression.
Referring to claims by Mr Galdes that Mepa costs were being passed on to home buyers, Mr Pullicino said that, when permit conditions were respected, the bank guarantees were refunded. And the adjustments to the tariffs, made in the year 2000, applied to commercial and not residential properties.
Mr Pullicino said enforcement by Mepa had been improved and would be improved further through the amendments he would move. Enforcement needed to be improved and public officers had to be vigilant at all times.
Concluding, Mr Pullicino referred to the resignation of Mepa deputy chairman Catherine Galea. He said a temporary ramp had been built over protected land to a building covered by permits. This ramp was not covered by a permit. He had been told that the ramp was needed to avoid a collapse, but regulations had to be followed, which was why he had asked architect Galea to resign. He had accepted this resignation, with regret, because officers in her position had to set an example.