In his article entitled “Environmentalists’ claims of harassment shot down – Property transactions and land ownership ‘in the public domain’”, (TMIS, 10 January), Stephen Calleja attempted to shoot down the representations of environmental NGOs – including Flimkien ghal Ambjent Ahjar (FAA) – that sensitive information, which could only have been sourced from Mepa files, was used publicly to attack two environmentalists, namely, Lino Bugeja of Ramblers Association Malta and Astrid Vella of FAA.

FAA suggests that Mr Calleja should go over again the NGOs’ joint press release since nowhere was there any assertion that the issue of ownership of a property was a confidential issue since, as he mentions in his article, land and property ownership is a public deed. Neither was there any dispute made regarding the publicly available planning application details, which are available in a searchable format online. The issues raised by the NGOs are considerably more serious.

What Mr Calleja should have done was check:

(a) Is the entire case file of individual planning applications – including applications, consultation documents, correspondence, plans, reports, decisions and so on – accessible to the public? The answer is no.

(b) Are case files freely available within Mepa even to those officers or sections that do not need the file for any administrative, operational or processing purpose? This was the case with Astrid Vella’s case file, which was a closed and archived case yet was found in the office of the former Mepa public relations officer who was known to have taken antagonistic stands against public objectors.

(c) Is it normal for mislaid files to be found in sections that have no need for the files in question or, worse still, why do files end up ‘lost’ as highlighted by Mepa’s Auditor when examining the case of the Bahrija development?

To further demonstrate the misleading nature of the original accusations against Mr Bugeja and Ms Vella made on PBS, the national state television channel, by Dr Victor Scerri, one could use the same full exposure methods endorsed by Mr Calleja in his article. Since it is obvious that public research had been carried out to provide information on the environmentalists’ properties, Dr Scerri would have known that in the case of Ms Vella, the property was sold to a third party years ago, while in the case of Mr. Bugeja, the property was acquired over 40 years ago and that he owned only half a tumolo, and not two tumolos as he claimed. As this was out of the Development Zone, Mr Bugeja never applied for a building permit, so where is the wrongdoing?

Ultimately, however, Mr Calleja misses two very important points: The first is that the Aarhus Convention is there to ensure that people who are ready to speak up against questionable or irregular practices have the right to do so without being subjected to unfair attacks or other forms of harassment. The second point is that whatever is now said or done, the fact still remains and becomes more resounding that in cases such as the one in Bahrija, Mepa is ignoring the very nature protection regulations that it should be safeguarding, such as the Natura 2000 classification.

When one considers Bahrija and many other cases where Mepa’s own experts and case officers advised against projects only to have them approved by the various DCC boards, or where work not covered by permits are sanctioned (approved), then one wonders why Mepa should exist at all. This further strengthens the resolve of environmental NGOs to continue making public similar cases and any form of malpractice regardless of any harassment or attacks.

Kenneth J. Borg

Secretary

Flimkien ghal Ambjent Ahjar