In a ridiculous attempt to calm down the electorate, which has shown itself to be rightly dismayed and angry at the plan to give a large tract of agricultural land enjoying beautiful sea views to a foreign (Jordanian) company, the government today came up with a webpage, complete with a fill-in form requiring full personal details, where members of the general public were invited to send in their suggestions for an alternative to the ODZ site at Żonqor.

Unfortunately this PR exercise is as much of a sham as the statements by the government and the Labour Party when giving reasons why “the South” needs this university and why all other sites so far suggested are not suitable.

First off, and let’s make sure the Prime Minister hears this loud and clear, it is not our responsibility to find any alternative sites. This is the government’s mess and the government should be the one to clean it up. This is not the way to go about building a new university and it’s a really bad case of putting the cart before the horse. A site should have been identified following a proper evaluation of the various options, requirements drawn up for the project and then an international call for "expressions of interest" published.

In this case, an agreement was signed, promising a site in an outside development zone, a site which moreover is only partially owned by the State (not the government), and partially privately owned, implying that the government will eventually be requisitioning this private land, ostensibly for a public purpose, to give to a private company. Then, when details of this agreement were revealed and everyone in Malta - bar those who are way too blinded by partisan politics - rebelled, the government attempted to save face and released that sham of a webpage.

The very idea of the government asking for ‘suggestions’ is as contrived as arguments about wanting to end the University of Malta’s monopoly and the Labour Party’s statement about the decontamination of the Qajjenza ex-gas depot. The Labour Party, now in government, should know that it would be Enemalta’s responsibility and obligation to decontaminate the site since they were responsible for the contamination in the first place, and if we are selling one third of Enemalta to the Chinese for a pittance, the least that they can do is honour their obligations.

One would expect that MEPA would insist that the full decommissioning plan of the Qajjenza site would include removal of all equipment and decontamination together with the restoration of the site to as close as practical to the original site conditions. Since the site was decommissioned two years ago this should be "works in progress". Throughout the EU, the requirement to prepare an approved decommissioning and decontamination plan is typical for the decommissioning of any large industrial site and locally MEPA has imposed similar requirements in the IPPC permits for both the Marsa and Delimara Power Stations. 

Whether or not the Qajjenza site is being used, it needs to be decontaminated and the same thing goes for the ‘31st of March’ fuel storage installation in Birzebbuġa, if this is ever decommissioned. However I understand the sentiments the current Birzebbuġa mayor that the locality needs more open spaces, rather than being built up further. The residents of Birzebbuġa deserve to be well compensated for the monstrosity that is now the Freeport which has aggressively expanded in the past few years ruining forever the beautiful, now not so Pretty Bay.

It is incredible that the government thought that it could get away with this environmental disaster just by writing a few lines of code on a website. It would be interesting to know what Leo Brincat has to say about all this. As the Minister for sustainable development and the environment (such an unfortunate Ministry title), he must feel that he has the most redundant job in Malta.

Apart from the environmental considerations, transparency too seems to have gone on a very early holiday. Not only was the agreement on the site done behind closed doors, but to add insult to injury, in the first week of May, the government went ahead and introduced a Legal Notice reducing the requirements for educational institutions to apply for university status.

With a stroke of a pen and just a few signatures, this government has not only thrown away an indispensable open space but also our educational standards, both to the detriment of future generations.