A dysfunctional Ferrari

The biggest blunder that the Malta Environment and Planning Authority chairman could have ever committed was when he had once tried to equate himself with a Ferrari to justify the generous financial package the government had “offered” him. It all reminded me in reverse order of the old dictum that if you pay peanuts you only get monkeys.

Coming to know of the publication of the report from a journalist felt like a kick in the solar plexus- Leo Brincat

These last months, Mepa seems to have developed a penchant for self-immolation. Arguably “abetted” by a vacuous new draft environmental policy that tends to progressively grow more and more detached from present-day realities “on the ground”, it seems to have found a way how to alienate, at a stroke, environmentalists, developers, users as well as its own somewhat disgruntled and demotivated personnel.

The latest twists and turns in the never-ending black dust saga seem to have served one sole purpose, that of undermining even further the authority’s weakening “authority” and, far worse, its long-dented credibility.

Bearing in mind that the Black Dust Parliamentary Committee was set up as a tool of appeasement by the Prime Minister himself in a feeble attempt to deviate responsibility from the government of the day, the least one would have expected would have been for it to get all the backing and support it deserved. To be fair, this was in no way lacking from the side of the Speaker and the Clerk of the House. But the way the committee was treated with regard to the Alfred Vella technical report betrayed apparent disdain and disregard. A problem exacerbated further by the by now customary stock in trade excuse under a Gonzi Administration. Yet another case of “administrative blunders and mistakes”.

The bipartisan condemnation and concern of the Committee members and Mr Speaker for this inexcusable delay speaks for itself.

Coming to know of the publication of the report from a journalist felt like a kick in the solar plexus.

At a time when the draft environmental policy made it clear that its success and/or failure would all hinge on the inter-departmental synergy and that between the various government agencies and quangos, this botched operation said much about the futility of the exercise.

In spite of the weak apologies brought forward during the farcical comedy of errors that we witnessed as a Committee Tuesday week, the following aberrations cannot be easily ignored:

• There was nothing specific about the report. The findings only came about when Prof. Vella was probing another issue – the impact of fireworks!

• The risible attribution of the six-month delay due to a unit manager having taken one month’s leave to honeymoon, a change at the helm of the Environmental Directorate and the industrial action by Mepa staffers regarding the Hexagon House saga.

• The fact that it took Mepa months to prepare a four-page non-technical executive summary that could have easily been drawn up in four or five hours.

• The Office of the Prime Minister’s permanent secretary’s failure to distinguish the obvious: that once a select committee on a specific subject was in existence presenting it with all the relevant documents had nothing to do with waiting for the House to be in session. Any far more junior civil servant would have long learnt that.

• Belatedly or not, the document was nevertheless published when Parliament was still not yet in session. So the lame excuse holds no water.

• While I have no qualms with the Environment Directorate director’s claim that the report was only published last week because “the report had to be circulated and reviewed before being made public”, I still think that once the report had already been drawn up it should have been submitted to the Committee on an “as is” basis, warts and all, while allowing Mepa to carry out its analysis at a later stage.

• Why did Mepa, given its total mishandling of the situation, choose to add insult to injury by presenting the Committee with a dossier only the moment the Committee met, thus giving us no time at all to examine it and ask relevant questions linked to it?

• While there was no hesitation on Prof. Vella’s part to make it clear that the 2000 Stacey Report on Black Dust was a sensible and very clear document, to date Mepa has continued to debunk its findings. Why?

• Now that Mepa have finally decided to “own” this report, what action will it take as regulator against Enemalta, which was so quick to dismiss its technical findings? Without knowing it, Mepa has now officially found the government guilty!

No wonder that a leading environmental journalist without any political agenda recently remarked on her blog that Enemalta’s repeated denial that the Marsa power station is the source of the black dust takes us back to the time of the Soviet leadership and its calculated deceit on the dangers of radioactive particles following Chernobyl. She ended up stating that “the pattern of denial is the same. It is intended to evade responsibility for the corporation’s failure to effectively address a problem that has affected thousands of citizens since it first occurred 17 years ago”.

We are all anxious to figure out what happens next.

Had Mepa done its job well from the very beginning there would have been no reason at all for this Committee to be set up.

So much for the much-vaunted Mepa reform and the new draft environmental policy!

brincat.leo@gmail.com

www.leobrincat.com

The author is the Labour Party’s spokesman on the environment, sustainable development and climate change.