In January of this year consultants Scott Wilson addressed NGOs in a meeting chaired by then minister Francis Zammit Dimech and said that the Maghtab dump was not worrying. Although FoE Malta has its reservations about the experts statements, Scott Wilson said that according to their studies of the impacts of the site, there was little danger from leachate, and levels of air and sea pollution were of no danger to human health. Friends of the Earth asked Scott Wilson to conduct their studies at different times of the years, and Scott Wilson promised this, although we were told not to expect dissimilar results.

Now Minister Ninu Zammit is claiming that Maghtab must be closed as soon as possible and is using this a a reason for having two ‘interim’ landfills. The minister should explain to the public the discrepancy between what he is claiming and the results presented so recently by the ministry’s experts.

Nevertheless, Malta should not have a mixed waste landfill near Hagar Qim and Mnajdra, because the area needs to be protected and upgraded in its entirety and only inert waste should be used to rehabilitate the quarries in the vicinity.

There are better options open to the government if Maghtab proves too dangerous to keep open and that is to use an operational quarry. The Minister should provide the public with preliminary comparative studies of the preferred interim landfill sites when compared to those operational quarries that could be prepared for landfilling.

Friends of the Earth also calls on the government to make waste reduction, separation, recycling and composting as well as the implementation of the polluter pays principle national prerogatives and to ensure that enough investment is made to have successful waste reduction and recycling schemes up and running in the shortest possible time.

The government has dilly-dallied on waste management for two long and this has now put Malta in a position to have to take undesirable decisions about its waste management strategy.

The failure to implement waste reduction and separation schemes is a symptom of an administration that is shirking its waste management responsibilities and needs a serious change of attitude. It is unacceptable that Malta prepares expensive waste management strategies to then ignore what it commits itself to. If those in charge of running our strategy are not able to indicate to the public within the coming months that they are able to do the job they are responsible for then they should be removed.