Inquiry on Xemxija mudslide (1)

Ms Pamela Hansen (The Sunday Times, February 12) questions the remit of the inquiry board set up following the recent incident at Xemxija. As a simple answer to Ms Hansen's question I will quote one of the four terms of reference for the inquiry board:

"The board has to establish whether the enforcement procedures as stipulated in the law, especially the procedures for the issuing of the stop and enforcement notices and the way they are administered, are adequate and effective in such cases."

I am sure that Ms Hansen, and your readers, appreciate that this indicates that the scope of the inquiry is not the Xemxija incident only, but the inquiry intends to investigate the whole process involved.

Having stated this, it must be also pointed out that I am on record as having stated repeatedly that I am not satisfied with the effectiveness of enforcement carried out by MEPA. However, one should also consider the latest enforcement statistics issued by MEPA which confirm that notwithstanding the need for improvement, MEPA's direct enforcement actions are at an all-time high.

We believe that more needs to be done by MEPA to use the existing legal tools at its disposal. There may be the need to extend these enforcement powers, in which case the necessary amendments to current regulations will be made. To this effect, I have already instructed MEPA to initiate the process to increase the maximum fine from Lm1,000 to Lm10,000.

Over the years there have been innumerable instances where MEPA has taken direct action to remove illegalities and many more instances where the owner removed the illegality immediately following the issue of an enforcement notice.

I am satisfied to note that following my speech in Parliament during the MEPA estimates debate last November, there has been renewed effort to step up direct actions and the number of direct actions by MEPA has increased. The truth is that today there is greater compliance with development permits than there was in the past. Once the question is whether we think that is enough, I believe that more still needs to be done.

One must also keep in mind that late last year my ministry appointed a Change Management Team to oversee the implementation of a number of proposals drawn up by the Management Efficiency Unit aimed at making MEPA ever more efficient.

In her contribution, Ms Hansen confuses issues of planning with issues of safety. The responsibility of the former lies fairly and squarely on MEPA; responsibility for the latter does not. Ms Hansen asks why "the inquiry will deal within only this case, when the media have been covering cases of damage caused by building sites for a long time".

The reason is that in the Xemxija case, works were being carried out which were not duly covered by a permit. The board of inquiry is required to focus on planning issues. As the minister responsible for planning, it is the failings relating to planning and enforcement that are of direct interest to me. As far as I know, in other cases, there were no illegalities relating to planning legislation and hence the reason why no board of inquiry was appointed in those cases.

I am aware that the Building Industry Consultative Committee (BICC) has looked into the matter of excavations and party walls and hence issues relating to safety. BICC has made proposals to Government on these matters.

Ms Hansen advocates that "safety should be brought under the same umbrella as environment and planning". Here again, I strongly disagree with Ms Hansen. My ministry's priority being responsible for planning is to strengthen enforcement and ensure that it will be an effective disincentive against illegalities. More needs to be done to change the culture so that everyone, big and small, will act fully within the remit of the law.

If safety were to be placed under MEPA's responsibility, it would severely weaken its planning enforcement function. We will end up with an agency which would not be able to meet its legal enforcement obligations in either planning or safety.