It was with great fanfare that the Malta Transport Authority, in August 2005, invited the public to act as local enforcement officers when it came to vehicle emissions. Send a text message containing the registration number of the offending vehicle, it said, and it would deal with the situation.

The public received the news with glee and, acting in a concerted manner, reacted accordingly. Within a few days of the campaign being launched, over 600 messages were sent. Two years on and that number has reached 130,000.

Yet, as any motorist will testify, the number of vehicles on the road belching out what is more often than not black, but even white, smoke, seems to have gone up rather than down. Foremost among the culprits are public buses and trucks, particularly those laden with heavy loads in aid of the construction industry that require a great deal of oil to be burned before they will comply with an order to accelerate.

The queue of motorists left gasping for air in their wake - barely able to open a window on a warm autumn day - are the innocent victims. As are the numerous residents unfortunate enough to live in the areas these vehicles frequent. The scene at rush hour around Portes des Bombes, as buses huff and puff in and out of the terminus, is among the most extreme evidence of that.

A relatively recent State of the Environment Report by the Malta Environment and Planning Authority found that the level of fine dust particles - produced by soft stone quarries, the atmosphere and emissions - exceeded the EU threshold on 37 out of 99 days in Floriana alone. Health experts have warned this this is leading to a rise in respiratory conditions like rhinitis and asthma. We still have to find out what the long term effects will be.

While it is true that with around 210,000 registered vehicles - Malta is the second-most car congested country in the world - the population of this island will have to put up with increased pollution (until a clean and efficient public transport system is available), the fact only emphasises the point that much more needs to be done to reduce emissions.

The VRT is clearly failing in that regard, for reasons that can only be described as suspicious. And, as the ADT has said in The Sunday Times' report on the issue today, just 2,000 or so of the 13,500 vehicles that have been inspected have failed the emissions test. This is a far cry from what the campaign set out to do when it was launched. The ADT admits that last October alone, 65 per cent cent of 20 buses that were tested failed the emissions test. Why have they not been taken off the road?

It may have been tolerable at the outset of this initiative to have as its objective the education of the polluting motorist. But enough time has now passed to turn education into zero-tolerance penalisation.

If this does not happen, and happen fast, the public spirited motorist will stop sending those important text messages. Which means the others will get away with it. Unfortunately, however, our children will not.