1 comment.Dumping of sand & other material in Qawra not authorised
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The Malta Environment and Planning Authority (MEPA) said in a statement this afternoon that it “can confirm that it never gave any form of authorisation for the St Paul’s Bay Local Council to dump the sand and other objects it removed from a nearby slipway in Qawra. Unauthorised to carry out this dumping activity, the local council, yesterday, on its own initiative, decided to dump the sand and other material close to a popular bathing area.”
MEPA said that in an email dated, 1st August 2012, it had informed the local council that “while it found no objection only for the sand to be removed from around the slipway, it requested the local council to notify it with the maximum volume of sand it intended to remove such that MEPA could assess the best way forward regarding the dumping/deposition activity.”
This information, MEPA said “was not forthcoming. Instead of organising a press conference to try to justify its actions and shift the blame, the St Paul’s Bay local council should take the honorable way and make a public apology for its mistake in dumping the sand and other material without having the necessary clearance from the Authority.”
It appears we have the usual Maltese tennis situation whereby the blame ball will be volleyed back and forth until such times as the public forget about it and all the idiots concerned can breathe a sigh of relief and get back to doing nothing. This is exactly what happened with the situation at Dwejra in Gozo when contractors with the authority of MEPA dumped forty lorry loads of quarry waste on the fossil beds so that a film crew could film what turned out to be a porn scene. Who was to blame for that? Was anyone ever sacked because of it? Of course not. Who’s decision was it to dump the quarry waste that was removed along the side of the road at the back of Dwejra rather than return it to the quarry where it was originally sourced? No one is ever to blame in Malta. One would think that if these people were going to take part in ball games of this kind they would at least ensure that they had a pair of balls to play with!