José Herrera, Minister for the Environment and Sustainable Development (the quintessential newspeak name for a ministry), has been receiving flack for his inability to live up to his promises to review the policy to relocate fuel stations in ODZ areas.

In April, Herrera requested the Environment and Resources Authority to come up with proposals to review the policy permitting huge tracts of ODZ to be eaten up by mega-complexes under the guise of a fuel station. Six months were not enough to see any concrete reform to stall such a controversial policy. In the minister’s defence, such criticism is a bit naive as such a way of dealing with reforms is symptomatic of many a Cabinet minister and verges on being a government epidemic.

In a similar situation being faced by the Minister for [lack of] Sustainable Development, Deborah Schembri had, as the then Parliamentary Secretary for Planning, presided over another policy of the ‘friendly to business’ type, the Outdoor Catering Establishments Policy allowing the possibility to place a platform instead of parking spaces.

I have lost count of the number of parking spaces removed from Tower Road and the Strand in Sliema.

In June 2016, this newspaper quoted Schembri as describing the policy “a balance struck between those wishing to enjoy public spaces and those wishing to offer al fresco dining services”.

The reality of this ‘balance’ is that the whole Strand from the Gżira end to Tower Road, Sliema, has become one lane as there is no place to have lifters or delivery vans.

While the policy for relieving traffic congestion is to increase traffic lanes, in one of the most concentrated urbanised parts of Malta, the government has reduced the lanes. When the Sliema council officially wrote to the parliamentary secretary to ask to discuss a review of the policy, the initial reply was: “We’re putting together the entities that have shaped the policy for a follow-up meeting. I will be inviting you to share your experience of the policy with them.”

This meeting was never held.

This summer in an exercise that verged on stand-up comedy, Parliamentary Secretary for Planning Chris Agius announced a reform of enforcement at construction sites. The medium which churns out propaganda and must be manned by an army of double-thinkers, the TVM website, ran this headline: “No more dust and noise from construction sites.”

There has never been such a scarcity of green wardens

Yes, telescreens have survived beyond 1984. Not ‘less dust and noise’, but the assertive fact that the ‘no more era’ has been proclaimed.

The reality over the summer was that the enforcement unit of the Building Regulations Office set up under the Gonzi administration stopped working after hours and on weekends and the phone number to report construction infringements after hours vanished from the BRO website.

In the latest twist to this construction enforcement reform, a few days ago, Minister Ian Borg announced a white paper which consists of 19 pages with lots of photos and very little text consisting of zero proposals that basically describes the present set-up.

The one novelty is, you guessed, the creation of another agency. One phrase struck me under the sub-heading ‘enforcement’. It said “the enforcement compliance section shall have a dedicated helpline operating on a 24/7 basis”.

So that’s the secret of the Labour government’s reform. Remove a service introduced by PN governments, go for a grand opening and launch a pseudo-consultation, only to then reintroduce what was there in the first place.

Another case study in the series of policy reforms which never materialise is the warden reform.

There have been three parliamentary secretaries responsible for local councils since Labour came to power, who have all spoken about warden reforms. Here again, an agency was created and the outcome has been a far worse service than was the case prior to the unbelievable five-year reform.

There has never been such a scarcity of green wardens. All kinds of quick fixes were attempted to tackle this shortage over the half-a-decade warden reform, yet we always return to the same situation of being told a new recruitment will shortly take place as part of the reform.

The same goes for traffic wardens.

When developers or residents book a crane permit and do not manage to book a warden, all hell breaks loose and while I am no fan of the construction frenzy, they are right to complain that the lack of warden availability to direct traffic while cranes are operational is not acceptable.

This year is the 25th anniversary of the coming into being of local government.

A perfect opportunity to review what is working and what needs to be reformed in our local councils. In March of this year, Parliamentary Secretary Silvio Parnis announced that “a reform white paper will soon be issued for public consultation”.

‘Soon’ cannot possibly mean eight months.

Reform under this Labour government is at best a means to create an agency used to dish out more jobs for the boys and girls, and, at worst, is simply a means of allaying any criticism until the detractors either give up or have their plates full with a new scandal revelation.

Paul Radmilli is a PN Sliema local councillor.

This is a Times of Malta print opinion piece

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