How much does it cost per metre of road to provide water, sewage, and electricity services to residents? The question can also be asked per dwelling? What does road contribution cover? What is left for taxpayers to fork out?

If there are 53,000 vacant dwellings in the country, how many hundreds of millions have we spent on providing services that are superfluous? If the vacant properties, standing shoulder to shoulder, cover the conurbation from Pembroke to Qormi including Pieta and Birkirkara, what is the cost of maintaining this vast expanse of roadway, sewage, drinking water and electricity supply networks?

Granted that 10,000 or so of these properties are second homes and that several thousand others are in fact let to foreigners but not registered so anywhere, granted also that, since the total was arrived at in 2005, several thousand more dwellings have been added to the total leaving it net at around 54,000, does it make any sense at all to continue to add to this massive surplus?

In the light of the publication of the 2005 Census, how can it ever be justified to permit high-rise development? Since high-rise development was not permitted before, what justification was there for MEPA to draft and issue its Floor Area Ratio (FAR) policy in 2006? Who will pay for the changes in the infrastructure, which these high-rise buildings will necessitate not only in their immediate vicinity but also remotely at traffic nodes and power stations? Has anybody estimated the additional cost to public funds? How is it justified? Have we nothing better to do with tax money? How about doing nothing instead and reducing taxes as a boost to the economy?

If the PN, being the party of the middleclass and being in government, has some sort of explanation for this astronomic waste of tax money, why does nobody in office say a word? Is it possible to carry on with an election campaign ignoring these findings, these questions and the need for answers?

Is it not bizarre that nobody in Parliament has raised the issue of the facts registered in the 2005 Census? Is it not bizarre that no newspaper has run any politician ragged for keeping silent in the face of the situation? Is it not bizarre that the matter is not raised in contrast with the government’s campaign on its peak construction achievement in the new hospital? Is it not bizarre that the election campaign seems to hinge on the government’s promises to embark on 40 new construction projects in the harbour area? What do they know that objective observers cannot begin to guess? Who will ask?

If the government announced that it was commissioning the excavation of just one modest trench from Pembroke to Qormi just for fun, would anybody raise an eyebrow? How come nobody seems to be concerned that we have in effect covered an area equivalent to the whole North Harbour region with trenches of all sorts, cables, pipes and culverts, tarmac, road foundations and street lighting, embellishments and decorated centre strips, traffic signs, crash barriers and benches, the whole caboodle, just for fun? Does it register anywhere that Malta is a freak among nations as its construction and demolition waste account for 80-90 per cent of its waste? Do we have a problem? Can anybody in any way associated with this folly of decades seriously consider himself or herself as a candidate for election or re-election? If any of us were completely rational would they or would they not find it hard to show their faces anywhere?

I recall a time when many of us poked fun at a socialist regime that achieved almost full employment by directing every jobseeker and student to dig ditches by hand that would have been more cheaply made by machines. It made no sense. It was a classic case of having people dig holes to fill them up again.

Instead of having an army employed in such obvious follies, we have built the equivalent of 10 of our largest local council localities for no apparent reason but with the pomp, ceremony and propaganda associated with the building industry for the past several decades. It is no mean hole in the ground. It is more than ludicrous.

How many of our businesses balance their books by claiming to own property that goes up in value each year? How many will fold if the banks decide that their collateral in property is no longer worth anything like what it was originally valued at? How will the banks fare with massive defaulting not only on home loans but across the construction industry and in every other field as well? Will it all be shrugged off politicians’ backs with a simple “too bad”?

Much is made of the Lm250 million spent on the new hospital through the ineffable dance of the government and the Opposition since the whole thing was started in the early nineties. Many of us are concerned about the increased running costs we will certainly incur. Some of us are still appalled by the Drydocks restructuring exercise in which Lm400 million of public funds disappeared from the books overnight. Some recall that a further Lm400 million are on the books as revenue due which is never likely to be collected. A few are concerned that the restructuring sent hundreds of Drydocks employees into disguised underemployment at the rates of pay they previously enjoyed. Problem solved? Some still have a wry smile for the Lm9 million embassy in Brussels or the Commonwealth conference limousine extravaganza. Others nitpick over official travelling expenses, MPs’ perks and pensions or the recurrent Lm200 million in social assistance almost arbitrarily distributed.

None of this is of much significance when we tot up the cost of the mega-construction folly. At a modest Lm40,000 a piece, our vacant properties amount to Lm2.2 billion. More realistically they tower over our national debt twice as tall. Nobody has quantified the cost of the infrastructure they have necessitated or the maintenance costs they will force upon us forever more. Running the new hospital is not a worry by comparison.

Imagine if some generous zillionaire decided to gift the nation by reclaiming from the sea an area equivalent to the Pembroke to Qormi expanse? MEPA had come up with an estimate of hundreds of millions for a far more humble land reclamation project and deemed it unworkable. Now imagine if the new bit of Malta, so graciously donated, happened to include the fields and valleys, the garigue areas, the rustic landscapes, the tree cover and the arable land area we have forfeited to build our immense ghost town. Who can put a price on such a vast part of our countryside we have capriciously destroyed and at astronomic cost?

Who can estimate the oxygen-generating capacity forfeited through the destruction of gardens, fields and wildlife areas? How will we quantify the life quality loss through the elimination of accessible open spaces? Anybody willing to hazard a guess at the increased mental stress we have given ourselves in exchange? We have not only lost them but we have also deprived all future generations of their enjoyment. Which economic expert can begin to measure the damage?

Does anybody care to suggest what the cost of maintaining 28 per cent of all dwellings for no good reason will be, considering the expected reduction in population numbers? Will we let them all simply rot away? Do we seriously expect to absorb an increase in population from abroad of 100,000 people in order to achieve full occupancy? Over which period?

Describing all this as an irremediable loss quite probably encourages people to shrug it all off as spilt milk. It is not all irremediable. Although the task of reversing this process of decades seems breathtaking, we must begin to think on these lines. We are an army that has advanced too far and too fast and is now in danger of being cut off from its lines of communication and supply. It is never too late to realise our predicament and to brainstorm about the next move.

It is not too late if we can make sure that our generals are made to stop ordering further advances, mad thrusts too far, competing with one another to make things far worse for us all. In 2006 the PN government illegally extended the development zone, justifying its foray into the unknown on the grounds that in this way it prevents the MLP Opposition from doing worse over the next 10 years if it attains office in the meantime. We have had bad leadership in the advance, now we must manage the most difficult of tasks, a strategic retreat without inviting a rout. Should we leave the same people in charge?

The situation warrants an immediate revision of laws relaxing height limitations all over the country, an emergency review of the FAR policy and a hermetic prohibition of development outside development zones. We should return to the policies and promises the PN made 20 years ago to redirect the building industry into restoration and to safeguard our threatened resource in unquarried stone. Yes, whatever happened to those nice words?

We have built a 55,000 storey Tower of Babel without worrying about its economic and social foundations. We can now choose whether to carry on as before and take it higher even as it creaks and groans, or to decide to stop and perhaps lighten the load. The Greens are all for a halt and for a planned retreat, all others to carry on regardless. It is a simple decision. Not deciding is the most dangerous decision of all.

Dr Vassallo is Chairperson of Alternattiva Demokratika – The Green Party

www.alternattiva.org.mt www.adgozo.com