Developers are calling for an area at sea to be reclaimed by construction waste as there was a lack of land facilities for its disposal.

The Malta Developers Association said immediate action was needed to tackle the serious problem of the lack of facilities for the disposal of construction waste.

"Very little space is now available. This consists of some two unfilled quarries that have made the operators of these sites enjoy a captive market in which demand heavily exceeds supply," the MDA said in a statement on Friday.

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"This situation has hit all contractors who cannot find a solution for the problem and face a steep rise in costs for waste disposal. Apart from the fact that this increase in costs will be reflected in an increase in building costs, the situation will soon lead to a serious scarcity of disposal sites."

The MDA said that applicants for permits to use their property for construction waste disposal had been facing excessive bureaucratic procedures lasting months to arrive at an acceptable solution to issues raised by the authorities.

Read: The building waste crisis

Identifying an area of the sea where land reclamation was acceptable from an environmental point of view with the aim of utilising the available amounts of construction waste for this purpose had also become an urgent matter, it said.

MDA called on government to redouble its efforts to ease this problem "in one way or another".

In July last year, 10 quarries were granted environmental permits to accept inert, construction and demolition waste for disposal to ease pressure on developers.

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