In a legal notice slipped out surreptitiously on the eve of the Santa Marija holidays, the government laid down that construction development at Malta’s hospital grounds will no longer be subject to planning permission.

Any development related to hospitals will now fall under a new category in planning law permitting works to proceed “without the need of any notification”. In line with a second legal notice published on the same day, such projects will also be exempt from requiring an environmental impact assessment (EIA).

The introduction of these legal notices is a throwback to pre-1992 (when Malta got its first Structure Plan and its first Planning Authority), when the government was not obliged to subject itself to planning laws.

It is not unprecedented for governments to grant exemptions from the planning laws when it decrees that the national interest requires it on economic or security grounds. All governments, not just in Malta, do this from time to time. The Nationalist administration, for example, had granted similar exemptions for the construction of the unsightly concrete structure now defacing the military maritime base at Hay Wharf and for the Lufthansa Technik hangar at the airport. Presumably, it felt the first was justified on defence security grounds and the other was economically necessary.

The problem about these two legal notices is that they have been published by a government whose stock of public trust on the environment has been so eroded that the public fears the worst.

The new laws, it may well be thought, will be abused to the benefit of rapacious construction developers who appear to enjoy a privileged relationship with this government to the detriment of the people’s environment.

It is an impression reinforced by the hole-in-the-corner method of the legal notices’ publication and the apparent unwillingness of the parliamentary secretary responsible for the Planning Authority or the Environment Minister to respond to media questions about the new laws.

This is a pity because a respectable case could be made for the changes in the law on economic, social and educational grounds. Barts Medical School, to be housed in a new block at the Gozo General Hospital, brings a top-class medical educational establishment from which the Maltese could benefit both educationally and medically.

The Singaporean firm, Vitals Global Healthcare, which has won the €200 million investment in the two State hospitals at St Luke’s and Karin Grech, in Guardamangia, as well as the Gozo General Hospital, will redevelop these hospitals into most advanced medical facilities to the economic, medical and social benefit of both Malta and Gozo.

However, it is not only the introduction of these legal notices by stealth that leaves a suspicion it may lead to abuse but also that the normal checks and balances applicable to major projects of this nature – except for their “being subject to prior clearance by the Superintendent of Cultural Heritage when the development is located in designated areas or scheduled property” and the need for “an environmental permit in accordance with Part V of the Act 2” – appear to have been suspended.

No matter how important such a major project is on economic, educational or social grounds, good governance requires there is public confidence in the environmental or planning norms being applied and that full transparency on what is being done in the taxpayers’ name is respected. This is currently missing.

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