Six environment NGOs this morning expressed concern that more than 1,200 cases of abuse were erased from the planning authority’s website in an effort to hide development illegalities.
Friends of the Earth, Flimkien għal Ambjent Aħjar, MOAM, NatureTrust, Ramblers Association and Zminijietna this morning said that, for years, they had been highlighting the fact that some authority officials were not committed to eliminate abuse and there were instances where enforcement officers were more focussed on concealing abuse and defending abusers.
In a statement, the NGOs noted that tampering of official data was a criminal offence and action had to be taken to bring the perpetrators to justice.
“This tampering of records casts further doubt over the workings of the Malta Environment and Planning Authority. Does this mean that the MEPA IT system lacks the necessary auditing and controls normally incorporated in any corporate computer application, let alone one used in such a sensitive sector costing millions of Euros annually in public funds?
“How is it possible that such changes were only noticed by MEPA officials when discrepancies in fines cropped up at the end of the year, signalling a potential loss of hundreds of thousands of euros in uncollected enforcement fines.
“The implications that MEPA’s IT network lacks a system of cross-checks to prevent abuse and a tamper-proof audit system to track any changes, raise questions of poor management that go beyond negligence.”
They asked whether the physical files matching the missing digital data were similarly removed.
The NGOs said that other cases where authority officials ‘failed to notice’ blatant abuse included the UC Ltd cement silo built without permits at Laboratory Wharf and the ongoing pollution caused by the cement plant and farm at Mqabba.
MEPA, they said, frequently ignored reports from the public and failed to take decisive action following repeated reports on the part of FAA and Ramblers. Abusive structures were, very often, sanctioned and legalised and the NGOs expressed concern that lack of direct action or sanctioning could be the result of political interference.
They noted that the system of fines did nothing to deter abuse, as these were not imposed systematically.