From Mr M. Causon

The Environment Ministry would do well to indicate the sites over which it says there appears to be some confusion. Had more time been allotted to the consultation process, as originally requested by AD, then a greater opportunity for a more civil and productive level of discussion would certainly have been taken up –- instead of having to suffer the deprecatory comments in the press made by George Pullicino after all AD's hard work to draw up and submit its representations.

Conducting site visits to hundreds of sites indicated on over 70 maps (incidentally the green “proposal” maps, not the yellow “request” maps) in the summer heat at great expense, considering the mounting fuel bills having to dash all over Malta and Gozo to meet the tight deadline, was no mean task.

An in depth study of every single area proposed was simply not possible in the restricted time limit although Alternattiva Demokratika notes with satisfaction that a number of areas, which had been researched exhaustively and flagged as having high potential of archaeological importance, have recently been held in abeyance until the proper studies can be carried out, despite pressure to develop some of these sites.

Other comments submitted by AD in support of continued protection of farmland and ecological areas threatened by Pandora box politics, while unacknowledged, have been adopted in the plans in certain cases. This was reflected in further adjustments resulting in further sites being dropped. Unfortunately, others were added, as in the case of Qrendi, although the second wave of proposals was refused a public consultation stage in the headlong rush to push the boundary blitz through Parliament.

With regard to who has sowed confusion, perhaps to the advantage of those who wish to pour concrete onto any remaining green lungs, it is worth noting that the posting of both proposal maps and request maps on the MEPA website public consultation link only served to add to the confusion. In order to unravel public uncertainty, much of the allotted six-week period had to be taken up answering queries from the public as to which set of maps they should consult. Even some Members of Parliament were fooled by the duplicity.

With regard to the zones and contrary to what the so-called Environment Minister has claimed, AD did its homework all right, to the extent that at least three sites (two of them sizeable Lands Dept proposals at Iklin and Mellieha), on which the Green Party had sent in its objections, have consequently been eliminated from the extension zone.

Any attempt to belittle the contribution made by the Green Party toward turning around a clearly unjust onslaught on disappearing rural landscapes of the Maltese Islands is nothing short of a pathetic political attack.

While AD participated fully in the consultation process, this is not to be taken as acceptance of a process, which is clearly a last, ditch effort to escape European standards applying to planning and other policies as laid out in the Strategic Environment Assessment (SEA) directive.

Mark Causon

Alternattiva Demokratika