I refer to Michael Glover's letter Fireworks Festival That Went Wrong (May 8).

In this regard, I would like to point out the following facts:

The unfortunate one-day postponement of the festival was caused by a technical malfunction in the ship transporting all the overseas fireworks material to Malta. This did not affect just the Italian participants' materials but the Polish and Australian participants' too since all materials were being transported together. As a result, the fireworks material had to be transported onto another ship that left one day later to Malta. The ship arrived in Malta on Thursday April 30, with insufficient time to commence the Fireworks Festival on that same day as planned.

The time lapses between the various displays are unfortunate. However, when one is co-ordinating the efforts of 15 different local and foreign fireworks factories, one can appreciate that there are many logistical and safety issues involved that cannot be ploughed through haphazardly.

Moreover, given that the festival was held within the Grand Harbour, one of the difficulties we face is that all the materials need to be loaded onto, arranged and fired from floating barges at the centre of the port. Such movement of fireworks on barges inevitably involves time.

In this respect one cannot make any plausible comparisons to fireworks displays organised by any one single fireworks factory and let off from land, as in the case of a normal festa fireworks display. In so far as the time lapse that occurred on the Saturday is concerned, this was caused by a mortar exploding inadvertently too close to a barge with fireworks set for the next display, consequently setting off part of the display which then had to be repaired and re-wired.

All this does not mean, in any way, that we have achieved satisfactory standards The MTA will strive to ensure that subsequent editions of the Malta Fireworks Festival will run more smoothly and with improved overall organisation, given that the event has now come to form part of our annual calendar of events.