It was announced last week that Mepa had to call off works to clear away layers of construction waste from parts of the picturesque Wied il-Ghasel, as it exceeded the allocated budget and had no more money to complete the job. Mepa officials and a private contractor spent 15 days in the valley, in the area known as T’ Alla w Ommu, in Naxxar, last October in an effort to clear a large stretch of natural land covered in construction waste.

When I first read this story I had to check the date to ensure that it wasn’t April Fool’s Day! However, having read through it several times I now realise it is nothing more than the latest example of Mepa’s ineptitude. Here we have a government authority entrusted with, among other things, protecting the environment, and yet is simply ignored by companies breaking the law.

The companies who cause problems in the first place simply sit back and thumb their noses at Mepa and everyone else, while the clean-up operation is paid for by, you guessed it, the taxpayer. Now what you have to remember here is that you the taxpayer are also paying for Mepa, so in effect you are paying twice.

The solution to this type of problem as I see it is quite simple and will require nothing more than a strengthening of the current legislation. Taking this case as an example we know that the concrete batching plants located in the valley caused the problem. Rather than getting into a time consuming exercise of trying to establish exactly the extent to which each company was responsible, they should all be held equally responsible and be legally required to clean up the mess and return the valley to its original state.

This way the responsibility and cost of any future clean-up operations will be down to the people who caused the problem in the first place rather than the taxpayer. Hopefully given the costs involved it would also have the effect of forcing these companies to not only be more careful of their own actions, but also to police each other in future. On a purely personal note I cannot understand how any company thinks it has the right to bury a beautiful valley under construction waste and concrete wash. They should be ashamed to call themselves Maltese.

James A. Tyrrell

County Antrim, N. Ireland