Sant launches environmental 'note book'

Alfred Sant said yesterday the funds being offered by the EU to improve the environment were a pittance compared with the capital investment required to deal with the problem.

Addressing a news conference at the MLP headquarters in Hamrun, Dr Sant launched an 18-page booklet containing alternative strategies for Malta's environment in two scenarios: under EU membership and under the partnership option.

Defining the publication as a "note book", the Labour leader said those who were saying the EU would grant Malta enough money to make good for the country's environmental deficiencies were either not well informed or wanted to deceive their listeners.

The environment note book will be beefed up to form part of the MLP electoral programme.

It compares the EU funds and how Labour intends to solve the environmental issues in waste separation and collection, air quality, water quality, sea water, noise pollution, nature protection and minerals.

Four pages of the booklet are dedicated to an appendix spelling out the EU projects which the government is committed to undertake under EU membership and the funding required.

According to the data in the booklet, no funding will be available for most of the projects the government had committed itself to carry out, including the closing down of the Maghtab and Qortin dumps and landfill facilities for construction and excavation waste.

"If Malta joins the EU, Big Brother will make us enforce the Union's regulations. EU authorities will inflict fines on the government where it fails to comply with the regulations.

"Such fines will have to be raised through taxation," Dr Sant claimed.

Answering questions, the Labour leader argued that monitoring for the upkeep of standards by the EU was ineffective.

The EU should not have forced Malta to accept the bottling of soft drinks in plastic bottles. Brittany in France, he said, had an abysmal record for breaching environmental regulations so far as pig farms were concerned.