Arnold Cassola, Alternattiva Demokratika – The Green Party Chairperson, led an AD delegation on a visit to the Smart City Project following an invitation by the management. The delegation comprised Henrik Piski, Alternattiva Demokratika Spokesperson on IT and Communications, and committee member Christian Holland.

Prof Cassola pointed out that the Smart City project is a great opportunity for the creation of jobs in the IT and other related sectors, but expressed his party’s concerns that the jobs created might not be contributing to enhancing our country’s green credentials. “We sincerely hope that the Smart City project, which will consume a high amount of Malta’s electricity, will be planned in such a way as to make full use of the renewable energy technology available today,” concluded Arnold Cassola

Michael Briguglio, Spokesperson for Social and Economic Development said: “AD welcomes the projected provision of job opportunities at Smart City. We augur that Smart City will be a hub of Maltese talent, productivity and innovation. We also augur that Smart City acts as a model employer with social responsibility, working hand in hand with agencies such as ETC and with trade unions to adopt inclusive employment policies. We augur that Smart City will be characterised by as much full-time employment as possible and does not resort to contractual or casual employment which offer bad job conditions.”

Henrik Piski, AD Spokesperson on IT and Communications added: “We wish that Smartcity will become a successful project where the resident companies will be offering not only IT marketing services, but will also re-locate part of their innovation and production center to Smartcity thus creating a Mediterranean hub for IT expertise. The government is urged to attract more IT students (especially more female students), to improve the IT education and finally to introduce the teaching of open source technologies.”

Ralph Cassar, AD Spokesperson on Energy, Industry and Transport, concluded: “This project should set the standard in construction practices, energy-efficiency and climate change mitigation. It is good that the Smart City Malta team have applied Article 5 of the EU Energy Performance of Buildings Directive, which demands that the developer carries out an economic, environmental and technical study on the use of Combined Heat & Power (CHP), renewable energy, central heating and cooling etc for such developments. Although the conclusion reached is that the CHP technique is not suitable for an office environment but rather for an industrial one, it is commendable that the Smart City team carried out the the study much before the Maltese authorities finally transposed this European directive into Maltese legislation only one month ago.”

Prof. Cassola concluded: “Following our meeting at SmartCity, we are much more reassured on the measures being taken to have an environmentally friendly environment. Of course, we believe that even more than what is being planned for can be actually attained. But the first steps, such as provision to use second class water from the nearby Xghajra sewage treatment plant, which would otherwise end up thrown away ino the sea, are certainly encouraging and innovative measures.”

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