With so much happening around us, most readers probably missed the fact that World Town Planning Day was marked last weekend. The big cheeses at Mepa celebrated by organising a public lecture on responsible planning.

Really and truly this looked like an exercise in black humour. They know full well that under their watch, planning can be called anything but responsible, so holding this lecture seems to be the 21st century equivalent of playing the fiddle while Rome burns.

It was therefore quite fitting for the Church’s Interdiocesan Commission for the Environment to describe this event as ironical. In a one-page statement it used the term “weak” or its derivatives nine times to describe the current planning systems, procedures, policies and proposed legislation.

This weakness is being translated into a raw deal for honest citizens and future generations but, on the other hand, it is another occasion letting speculators make hay while Mepa’s sun shines.

How can Mepa speak about responsible planning when in just 24 hours it approved the request for Castille’s new lighting system, which led to the outrage committed on the historic building at the request of an organisation set up by government and for the benefit of a company favoured by government itself?

Castille’s beautiful façade suffered irreversible damage and, adding insult to injury, the perpetrators of this disgrace will be paid €300,000 out of our pockets.

The law was ignored, government’s Restoration Unit bypassed and the conditions set by the Superintendence of Cultural Heritage totally flouted. Faced by all this, Mepa is doing nothing except trying to pass on the blame to someone else.

But while the environment burns, Mepa is happy to organise a lecture about responsible planning!

And if this is not enough, the list of barbarities government is committing against the environment seems to be endless.

The Church’s commission gave us a number of examples. Government decided that projects in hospital-designated areas be exempt from environmental impact assessment procedures or from the development permit application process. The commission is of the opinion this is unacceptable; an opinion expressed by other organisations.

Where responsible planning and environment protection are concerned it is now clear the government has decided to fast-track back to the Lorry Sant days at sonic speed

The commission also deemed unacceptable the proposal for the term “educational purposes” to be abusively stretched to include and justify developments in outside development zones that are purely profit-driven, or which manifestly do not qualify as such.

By some stretch of the imagination, even proposals for racing tracks for cars and motorcycles are now deemed “educational”.

The commission quite rightly objects to all this, as it does to the government’s latest fad of trying to silence objectors by saying that large tracts of land are needed for, what is deceitfully dubbed as “educational or health-related purposes”.

Earlier this week, Nationalist MP Robert Cutajar strongly criticised Mepa for succumbing to pressure by changing its policies to allow buildings of up to seven storeys at Ta’ Masrija on the Mellieħa bypass. This could see the construction of up to 300 apartments on this site, creating a negative environmental and social impact.

One would make quite a load of hay while the sun shines on such a project.

But the path for such environmental nightmares was studiously prepared by replacing the Structure Plan with the so-called Strategic Plan for the Environment and Development.

The commission described this as “a very weak document which does not even deserve the adjective ‘strategic’” and rendered development in outside development zones much easier.

It had recently published extensive reactions to the three Bills related to the Mepa demerger. In 2009, the commission had proposed a demerger between the planning and the environmental divisions, but done in such a way that the environment would be given greater protection. It is now very clear for the commission that the way the demerger is being proposed makes the environment a big loser.

“The commission sees the current proposals simply as the collapse of governance in the planning authority coupled with direct legally sanctioned ministerial involvement.”

They do not mince their words, nor do they hold back from harsh criticism. In their estimation, the Environment Protection Authority being proposed is one which provides no teeth, or even a jaw.

On the other hand, the executive chairman of the proposed Executive Council of the Planning Authority has more power than the council.

More so this chairman, according to the commission, will also be the minister’s puppet and can be dismissed by the minister for a reason the minister considers just.

It seems that besides the “king tal-lands” (the description given to the person in a position of trust directly appointed by Planning Parliamentary Secretary Michael Falzon, who accompanied Marco Gaffarena to make certain that his desire for choice pieces of land be fulfilled), we are going to be lumped with the “king tal-planning”, whose role has been reduced to be the messenger of his master’s voice, i.e. the minister.

It is a great misfortune that where responsible planning and the protection of the environment are concerned it is now very clear the government has decided to fast-track back to the Lorry Sant days at sonic speed.

There is very little hope that there will be successful efforts to, in the words of the commission, “amend the proposed Bills in a spirit of good sense for the common good and well-being of the population of the Maltese islands”.

As the government, in line with pre-electoral shady deals, continues to let us down by placing the interests of the few over our common good we, the common citizens, should take concrete actions before every tract of countryside is gone and different historical buildings are irreversibly damaged.

Aren’t we the guardians of a heritage to be passed on to future generations?

Therefore, we should not be so complacent by letting the marauders run riot, stealing what is collectively ours with the sanctioning of the government, which in its essence, should be the guardian-in-chief of our riches.

joseph.borg@um.edu.mt