Call for urgent waste separation programme

Labour MPs insisted yesterday the government needed to urgently embark on a waste separation programme as a first step before building landfills.

Environment spokesman Joe Brincat, who was speaking at Pembroke (picture), said the government had delayed its decision on where to build an engineered landfill and temporary landfills now had to be set up because the government had promised the EU to close Maghtab next year.

This did not make sense and would create a big environmental disaster. The rational thing to do was to retain Maghtab until the engineered landfill at Ghallis was ready to operate.

The government, Dr Brincat said, also lacked a plan for waste separation, which should have been the first step before the building of landfills.

In May 2002, then Environment Minister Francis Zammit Dimech had said that the landfills were to start operating in 2004 and waste separation should start in the beginning of that year. Later he had told the World Summit for Sustainable Development in Johannesburg that waste separation would start at the end rather than the beginning of 2004.

But in July, Minister Ninu Zammit said waste separation on a national basis would start in 2006.

The Nationalist government, Dr Brincat said, lacked a clear plan on how to embark on waste separation. And it was useless to have an engineered landfill unless waste was separated.

Public works and construction spokesman Charles Buhagiar said it was a shame that the Nationalist government chose not to continue the work which had been initiated by a previous Labour government regarding waste separation. Waste separation, he said, was an important process for the production of good quality compost. The Labour government of 1996-1998, had embarked on a pilot project of waste separation in Marsascala and Pembroke, together with the relevant councils.

Rather than building a temporary landfill in the vicinity of Mnajdra, the government should take initiatives aimed at creating a public conscience on the importance of waste separation, while launching a national waste separation scheme.

MLP local councils spokesman Chris Cardona criticised the government for not involving local councils on such issues. Councils carrying out waste separation projects, he said, should receive financial assistance.