It transpires that Sliema residents’ health is not a priority for the authorities as, for the past decades, MEPA has defied sensible town planning logic and allowed the unsustainable overdevelopment of Sliema. This unbridled overdevelopment has progressively generated heavier and more constant vehicular motor traffic and consequently air pollution which has reached alarming proportions. According to technical traffic flow reports (ADT Report dated March 2007 and the Bonello Report in 2008), the Sliema roads infrastructure cannot cope with the present needs and much less with future demands. Yet, well aware of this, MEPA continues to authorise further development projects in Sliema. ADT on its part asserts that more development in Sliema will precipitate the Sliema traffic problems and admits its limitations in solving the traffic problems due to Sliema’s inadequate infrastructural and overdeveloped situation.

Moreover, and consequently, the air pollution levels as monitored and reported by MEPA in Manuel Dimech Street and the Savoy area, have for the past years exceeded the established safeguard limits as indicated by the European Union, to the detriment of residents’ health and quality of life.

However, regrettably the authorities (MEPA, ADT, Sliema Local Council (SLC) and the central government) seem reluctant to effectively tackle the precarious Sliema traffic and air pollution problems. Similarly, they seem neither able nor willing to prioritise Sliema residents’ health and, much less, the residents’ quality of life over their other respective ‘political’ considerations. The central government has all along been conspicuous by its silence and only made its presence felt cashing millions of Maltese liri from the sale of the Holiday Inn, leaving residents to face the horrors of the Tigne development projects.

It has been more than two years since the Sliema Local Council decided to commission a Sliema holistic traffic management plan, but the commissioning of such a traffic plan was soon shifted to ADT. After over two years, Sliema is still without its much needed and long overdue holistic traffic management plan. Fair enough, ADT did propose some piecemeal traffic management plans for the Strand and Savoy areas in 2007; these were however rejected by the Sliema Local Council.

Subsequent traffic management piecemeal proposals which were submitted in 2008 by the undersigned on request by the SLC, and in the Bonello Report for the Savoy area, were initially ping-ponged between the SLC and ADT, without being discussed, for months. These proposals have been left in limbo at the Sliema Local Council for the last eight months.

Meanwhile Sliema residents are subjected daily to health hazards caused by the resultant air pollution in this locality.

Joe Morana

Sliema