Labour environment spokesman Leo Brincat is calling on the planning authority to prove what it says that all waste packaging is being recycled.

The only available statistics dated back to 2008 and showed Malta only recycled 12 per cent of packaging waste, far less than the EU requirement that member states recycle about half such waste, Mr Brincat said.

It was not the only gripe the opposition spokesman had with the way in which the Malta Environment and Planning Authority’s waste packaging recycling scheme was being run.

He noted with concern that only 2,700 commercial entities had registered as waste producers, out of the 10,000 or so such entities that should have done so.

Mr Brincat said a specific waste packaging company had misled its members by claiming that by signing up they would automatically be registered with Mepa.

The government and Mepa had remained silent about this “for reasons known only to themselves”, he said. Nor had the authorities said anything when this same company encouraged members not to join a compliance scheme.

He accused public waste recycling company Wasteserv of lacking transparency, saying the government had yet to present the company’s audited accounts to Parliament.

Recycling company Green MT also came in for a verbal lashing, with Mr Brincat noting its “arbitrary” raising of late registration fees on its members, despite it not being permitted to do so.

The incident dates back to last November. At the time, Green MT CEO Joseph Attard had been adamant that letters demanding payment of late registration fees had been misinterpreted.