While judiciously entertaining the possibility that the controversial Scott Wilson report may not be all good news, your editorial (TMID 19 February) betrays that The Malta Independent has, albeit reservedly, bought into the attempted glossing-over of the Maghtab X-ray by the ministry concerned.
To put things in their proper perspective as to how keen the government is to release an accurate snapshot of Malta’s greatest environmental disaster, one should consider the wider framework.
Last week the EU Commission threatened sanctions over Legal Notice 217/01 which it found to be in breach of the United Nations convention on the public right of access to information.
The Rural Affairs and Environment Ministry has so far managed to hide behind the shelter of this abusively drafted legal notice which failed to fully transpose the Aarhus Convention. The authorities refused to release data on emissions, opting to keep it under wraps with various invalid excuses for a number of years, despite requests from the public.
Although the ministry says it has at last posted a summary of the Scott Wilson report on the internet, some important facts from the report are not included in the document on display at the MRAE website. On the other hand, anyone with an elementary grasp of technical reporting is now free to make an appointment with WasteServ to view the Scott Wilson report in its entirety and check the facts for themselves.
They will discover that crucial references made by Scott Wilson Consultants to the World Health Organisation regarding daily intake tolerance level for dioxins, which in turn made clear the heightened significance of air-borne dioxins in the particular case of Malta, were at no time actively communicated to the public. On the contrary, every effort was made during a Malta Standards Authority presentation on dioxins at the press conference attended by the Environment Minister to dismiss any risk from inhalation as being “not significant”, which is an outright contradiction of the findings of the report.
It is good news that EU Directive 2003/04 has now come into force, backing up the UN convention on access to information, public participation in decision-making and access to justice in environmental matters.
Alternattiva Demokratika alerted the Aarhus monitoring board about the Maltese government’s lapse in implementing the convention as agreed by Malta on ratification. A draft law is currently underway to amend the evasive legal notice which has let us down so badly during the years of silence.
The Green Party will not relax in its fight for the public right to information, especially where protection of the environment and public health are at stake.
Mark Causon
AD Environment spokesman