(Adds Rural Affairs Ministry's statement)

The Labour Party has called for an independent audit on how the Marsa incinerator was operating and if its choice had been proper.

In a statement, spokesman Leo Brincat said the incinerator had been worrying residents, environmental experts and journalists who did not have a political agenda for some time.

The government should say if it was true that Wasteserv was regularly facing technical problems with the maintenance and servicing of the incinerator’s combustion chamber. The incinerator, he said, had never been intended to burn chemical, clinical and industrial material.

Mr Brincat said the government should declare if the smells coming out of the plant were due to the chillers being used as well as a lack of space to store the hundreds of tonnes of animal waste and other waste generated by food producers, includuing rabbit and chicken slaughterhouses.

RURAL AFFAIRS MINISTRY’S REACTION

The ministry said that the opposition’s statement reflected its inconsistency as until some time ago it used to say that the proposed incinerator was too large for the country.

With this incinerator, the ministry said, the facility at St Luke’s Hospital, that at the Gozo hospital and the temporary incinerator at the slaughterhouse could shut down for good. Money was saved as a separate incineration facility was not required at Mater Dei and as the energy in waste not coming from the slaughterhouse was being used to reduce the expense of the diesel required to keep temperatures high.

This was possible because the necessary upgrading had taken place for the incinerator to be able to accept several types of waste from hospitals and industry.

The problem, the ministry said, was not the incinerator but odours produced by waste when the incinerator is stopped for maintenance.

This waste is stored at temporary cold stores which WasteServ was providing until permanent cold stores are developed. The designs for these stores are currently being prepared.

It said auditing of the incineration could be made by logging into WasteServ’s electronic site and through monitors which were set up outside the building.