The admission by planning authority CEO Johann Buttigieg that Mepa has more than 4,000 pending complaints still to investigate is not just a matter of serious concern but also a reflection of what is symptomatic of this country: a people generally allergic to keeping rules and a government generally reluctant to enforce the very rules it enacts.

More worrying is that the admission by Mepa’s CEO comes at a time when the government is under fire from environmental and cultural heritage organisations over its plans to separate the authority’s planning and environmental functions. It is feared the proposed changes will pave the way for more illegal development and at the same time weaken the authority’s enforcement arm by introducing lengthier procedures before effecting actual enforcement.

Regulations introduced by the previous administration had banned the possibly for abusers to obtain a permit for any illegal development outside the development zones or in protected areas. This ban is set to go. It emerges that there were three enforcement officers to monitor the whole of Malta to enforce that blanket ban. Mr Buttigieg says he wants to see their number raised to 12, which is commendable, but less impressive if their wings will be clipped, as proposed.

The problem of enforcement is not restricted to Mepa. Only last week this newspaper reported how for years slurry (sewage) has been illegally dumped in Burmarrad fields. Eliciting guarantees from the responsible authorities that the agricultural produce available on the market was safe for consumption was not possible, as the authorities resorted to pointing at each other.

The Environmental Health Directorate said preventing bad practices was the responsibility of the Agriculture Department which initially said the matter did not fall within its remit but later admitted it had just five inspectors responsible for all agricultural-related checks in the whole of Malta.

This newspaper confronted a similar situation when trying to establish who was responsible for monitoring the public health risk posed by asbestos material. Malta follows EU-prescribed directives on the subject but there is no licensing regime, which means that in theory any company can offer asbestos-cleaning services without public health risk insurance. Government tenders for asbestos disposal used to demand this cover but the requirement was recently dropped.

Mepa said it was responsible for overseeing the transportation, storage and export of asbestos material. The Occupational Health and Safety Authority said it was mostly responsible for the health and safety of the workers engaged and oversaw the industry by requiring asbestos contractors to submit a method statement of the job involving the material. It was not possible to establish who exactly was finally responsible for public health and safety risks.

In recent weeks the government has repeated the mantra that jobs are continually being created but that the right people were not being found and that foreigners were being employed instead. This country needs to find ways to meet the human resource requirements of the economy, and it is right that the government is looking into how to best redress this misbalance.

But the country has other needs too, most notably in enforcement. There are people in the dole queue that, given the right motivation and training, could be employed to boost the government’s enforcement arms. Rules and regulations enacted in Parliament, particularly those involving public health and the environment, need to be seriously enforced and not left on paper. That misbalance needs to be redressed as well.