MP insists Malta should restart oil exploration

Labour MP Joe Mizzi has urged the government to restart oil exploration efforts. He also called for an assessment of the activities of the Malta Resources Authority, saying it was not playing a determining role to protect ordinary people.

Speaking during the budget debate on the Ministry of Resources and the Infrastructure, Mr Mizzi said the authority had played no role as the water and power tariffs continued to rise through the introduction of the surcharge. It had not said whether this surcharge was justified.

Neither had the authority come out with any energy policy or renewable energy sources. It was also saying nothing about the possibility of oil exploration, even though the possibility of striking oil within Maltese territory was there.

Mr Mizzi insisted that the government had been wrong in having given up on oil exploration in Gozo, started by the Labour government. Rock samples had shown that the possibility of striking oil had been very real but exploration had to go deeper.

The Labour MP said it also appeared that an oil company which had planned an exploratory oil well between Malta and Libya had given up because delineation problems had resurfaced. What had become of discussions for the two countries to explore for oil together? Malta, Mr Mizzi insisted, should not stop looking for oil when countries all around its territory were already extracting it.

The Labour MP also spoke briefly about the Malta Environment and Planning Authority, saying it was being inconsistent when it refused an extension of a quarry at Marsascala but then allowed the development of the Waste Recycling Plant in the same locality.

Earlier in the debate, Charles Buhagiar (MLP) said many public cleansing contracts were being awarded to private companies and the workers of the Public Cleansing Section were underutilised.

He complained that modernisation of the Marsa government workshops, started by the Labour government, had not been continued as planned. Skilled tradesmen were growing older and they were not being replaced. The Apprentice Scheme had been stopped and unless the department was given new blood it would be dismantled.

He said the workshops needed to be more effective in collecting payments due to it from government departments. Workers were not being paid for their overtime because public entities had not paid up their dues.

It was positive, Mr Buhagiar said, that the Restoration Unit, started by Labour had kept functioning. But what was being done to source more EU funds for conservation? Malta had 25 kilometres of bastions, the longest in the world, but many were not in a good condition. The Infrastructure Minister was conscious of the problem and was trying to do something about it. But this was a specialised and costly process. Had any request been made to the EU to assist Malta in this sector?

The budget of rehabilitation committees also fell far short of what was needed and the situation was getting worse. This year they were only getting Lm250,000 between them. In 2004 they had spent Lm600,000. The Cottonera Rehabilitation Committee had only been given Lm50,000. Work on St Helen's Gate in Cospicua has been promised since March last year but it had not yet been carried out. The same applied for Ghajn Dwieli Tunnel which had been planned for this year.

Another project which was supposed to be done this year was the development of the Xaghra at Cospicua. Was this project still on?

Turning to the Valletta Rehabilitation Committee, Mr Buhagiar said that former Infrastructure Minister Francis Zammit Dimech had promised that the restoration of the outside of St Catherine Church would be followed by rehabilitation of the interior. Yet the ministry was now saying that there was no money and work would not be carried out.

The promised paving of Merchants' Street and the remaining part of St John Square had also been left pending.

Mr Buhagiar said the paving works at Mdina had taken four years. This was unacceptably long, even though problems, including archaeological finds and sub-standard materials, had interrupted the project. During this time, some three million tourists had visited Mdina and formed the wrong impression.

Turning to the embellishment of tourist areas, Mr Buhagiar said the Labour administration of 1996-98 had opted to upgrade whole areas rather than just promenades. That was what was done in Bugibba, and it was shameful that there was now no proper upkeep of this locality.

The present government was taking the wrong approach by, for example, removing monuments because they were vandalised, instead of repairing them.

He said the embellishment of half a kilometre of promenade at Xghajra was not of a high standard, and the car park, especially, could have been done much better.

It was a good thing that Xemxija promenade had been embellished with St Paul's Bay council, but it did not make sense that the project was intended to create parking space on both sides of the road and then this was changed to involve only the seaside. Mepa had not permitted this at Xghajra. The idea of rehabilitating village squares was good, but the embellishment of Mosta square had been going on for 12 years, since 1993. In contrast, a similar project at Zurrieq was completed quickly. On the project at Wied Babu to Hagar Qim, first announced in July 2004, negotiations with Mepa had only started in May this year.

It was important to open up valleys, but what was to be done with run-off water? Work that had been done between Marsa and Qormi had not given the desired results, as the flooding of October 30 had shown.

Mr Buhagiar said it was not right that people wantonly disposed of bulky refuse in the countryside. But if the problem was so acute, did the government have to wait for two years before doing something about it? It was only this year that a framework of new regulations had been drawn up.

Mr Buhagiar said the Building Industry Consultative Council should analyse the effects on the market of the new property sales tax.