Will Mepa reform lead to any change?

The Malta Environment and Planning Authority has been the source of so many complaints that in the run-up to the election last March, the Prime Minister promised he would take it in his charge and personally see through the implementation of a much needed reform.

In distributing the different ministerial portfolios, the Prime Minister kept his promise and took Mepa under his wing. The second part of the promise - a thorough Mepa reform - is still in the making. Anyone who expected this to be carried out sooner at the snap of a finger is undoubtedly unaware of the real implications of the task.

It is now eight months since responsibility for Mepa passed to the Office of the Prime Minister and recently we have been given glimpses of where this reform might be heading. These glimpses do not indicate whether there is anyone besides Lawrence Gonzi who is in charge of the reform; and do nothing to reassure me that the needed changes will happen.

An interview with the Prime Minister carried three weeks ago in The Malta Independent included some general comments on the Mepa reform. More recently, he expounded on this issue during a business breakfast.

At first sight, Gonzi's approach seems sensible and logical: Mepa reform is to be centred on transparency, efficiency, enforcement and consistency. The problem is that he thinks he can get the desired effects by legislative and administrative measures. Unfortunately, the problem is one of the organisation's very culture and it can never be nudged to change itself; more so as Mepa seems to be playing the old game of showing that it welcomes change, as it has always done to retain the status quo.

Back in October 2004, the minister then responsible for the authority, George Pullicino, had announced that he had taken the initiative to commission three reports about how Mepa works. The first, carried out by the Management Efficiency Unit, made recommendations on the way Mepa processes development applications. These were duly implemented and failed miserably, with no tangible changes in the end result.

The other two reports were carried out by foreign consultants: an audit on the way Development Planning Application (DPA) reports are drawn up and an audit on submissions made by architects during the processing of development applications. These two reports were never published and have been guarded as some state secret.

The Prime Minister now seems to be concentrating on other issues. He was reported as having made a case for Mepa to be able to ditch permit applications that immediately appear to be 'unacceptable'. This is kow-towing to the environmental lobby in the most incredibly naïve and short-sighted way.

No planning officer need spend more than two hours to write a negative report on a really 'unacceptable' application. So where's the problem? The problem is that there is no such thing as black and white and there are only shades of grey. What is unacceptable to me is not necessarily unacceptable to you.

Gonzi's 'solution' will only create yet another stage in the permit determination process, one that depends on subjective opinion and therefore gives rise to discrimination or corruption - whether perceived or real. Mepa, of course, will need to create yet another job or jobs - that of filtering applications - and so complicate the process even more. Moreover, this will spawn another opportunity for people to protest about every permit that they 'know' should have been immediately ditched, but was not.

The Prime Minister also spoke of effective enforcement and giving the authority more powers to carry out direct action. This is yet another Mepa canard. Giving it more power than it has at present as regards enforcement will only increase the possibility of abuse of power.

Currently, Mepa already has a long list of cases where direct action can be taken but it does nothing about them. It resorts to direct action in fits and starts in cases that it chooses without rhyme or reason. This is being ignored by those who want to beef up the authority's enforcement powers at law.

The Prime Minister did not seem to indicate any measures aimed at reducing inconsistencies in the authority's decisions - a state of affairs that is the source of real and justified complaints about the way it treats citizens. This inconsistency is partly the result of Mepa continually tripping itself in its own feet as it has far too many policies.

The gaping chasm between how Mepa deals with small individual applications and how it deals with large projects is also part of this problem.

In major projects, authority officials negotiate with applicants and arrive at a compromise. Not so with the little citizen applying for some petty proposal.

I could go on and on. The problem with Mepa is the culture within and there is no real solution unless a determined change agent from outside is entrusted to change this and does so before he or she turns native - as has apparently happened to the Prime Minister in the last eight months.

micfal@maltanet.net.