The Labour Party’s spokesperson for the environment, Leo Brincat said it is not fair on people living in the south of Malta that for the last 10 years, no analysis has revealed the origins of black dust which have spoiled home facades and harmed the quality of air.

“People have been fooled, laughed at, taken for a ride. Back in 1999, Environment Minister Francis Zammit Dimech commissioned a study to see the impact on the environment and air around localities in its vicinity of combustion fuel emissions from the power station.

“Two years later, in 2001, the same minister went on record saying that not only had the situation been partially rectified, but the air that we breathe is of a better quality.

“This is an outright lie, as the situation has worsened to the extent that two out of every three persons currently living in Fgura, the locality most affected by emissions are, or are expected to be, suffering from asthma.

“In the Nationalist Party electoral manifesto, the party said that if elected, action will be taken immediately to find out the origins of the black dust. Furthermore, in the preview to Budget 2009, the PN stated that studies will be conducted to find out the source of this black dust. However, to this day, nothing has been done about the matter,” said Mr Brincat.

Martin Seychell, Director for the Environment at the Malta Environment and Planning Authority (MEPA), said that although the Stacey Report (the study commissioned in 1999) shed some light on the black dust problem, final studies failed to compare the fallout particles in Fgura with the fly ash emitted by the power station.

Mr Seychell said that it has taken a long while for studies to be conducted because it has been a stop-start problem, as although complaints were received between 2000 and 2007, complaints reached an all time high last summer.

Mr Seychell said that laboratory tests recently concluded that while fly ash samples taken from the Marsa power station detected levels of vanadium and nickel, commonly found in such emissions, no trace of nickel or vanadium was detected in fall out samples handed over by Fgura residents.

“Hence this time round MEPA decided to collect the dust samples by using standard methodology, as dust samples handed over to the authority by residents were heavily contaminated with construction dust, organic matter, matter of insect origin and other material.

“Once sufficient sampling is collected, we will send the dust from the power station and dust collected to laboratories abroad to see if there is any relation. What we can categorically say so far from studies is that this black dust is neither the result of traffic congestion, nor from the Malta Shipyards. Perhaps there are certain emissions from industrial zones or illegal activities which are causing this dust. It is only when we have sufficient sampling that we will know,” said Mr Seychell.

Meanwhile, Enemalta issued a statement saying that over the past decade, the fuel used by the Marsa power station has been improved, resulting in emissions being reduced by 80 per cent.

The statement said that Enemalta disagrees with what Mr Brincat stated, in which he failed to mention that there are numerous other possible sources of black dust, such as the combustion of fuel other than at the Marsa power station, such as the Marsa incinerator, vehicular traffic, ships coming in and leaving the harbours, bakeries and industrial boilers among others.