It appears that the government, with apologies to Shakespeare and the Danish people at large, has acquired something truly rotten from the state of Denmark – in the form of the technology chosen for the Delimara power station extension.

Thursday’s marathon parliamentary sitting that examined and voted on an Opposition motion against the power station extension contract was fully warranted. And whether it was an act of political posturing or not, the Opposition was quite right to have insisted on the debate. The results of voting on the motion are another matter altogether, and the ensuing bickering over the vote would have been easily solved had the Opposition’s request for the live airing of the parliamentary debate been granted.

That the Opposition would seek to gain political mileage from the issue, as it has from others, is undeniable. That is, after all, the very nature of politics. But when the need for political mileage crosses paths with genuine concern for a country’s citizens, it is the latter interest that overrides the former.

Yes, the country needs to replace the energy source that is the Marsa power station so it could be closed down in the near future in line with European Union directives, as well as to address the very serious and perfectly valid health concerns the archaic installation has caused and is still causing to this day, particularly among the residents of Marsa itself.

Way back, this newspaper had first broken the news about the extension tender, and applauded the fact that one of the central points in the tender was that the extension would need to be able to be converted for the use of natural gas in the future.

But since then, the government has chosen the heavy fuel oil option, and declared that the investment required to upgrade the country’s infrastructure so as to cater for natural gas was too expensive.

There are a number of serious problems with the premise, putting completely aside allegations of corruption, of which the Auditor General had found no “hard evidence” possibly due to a lack of cooperation from and apparent amnesia of some of those who had been hauled in for questioning.

For starters, in a country the size of Malta, in which there is simply no other option other than to place a power station within a figurative stone’s throw away from a populated area, untried and untested technology should never be an option.

While we have not stood against the Valletta city gate project and all that it entails as others have, we find it difficult to swallow the fact that the government is willing to many spend tens of millions of euros on the project, but at the same time is unable to find the funds to take such a tangible step towards safeguarding public health.

The general consensus is that the type of technology chosen for the extension, with all the doubts that come along with that decision as raised perpetually by the Opposition, is probably the worst thing for the environment, but the best thing for the state coffers.

But, it must be asked, can we really put a price tag on the public’s health, or indeed a price tag on any potential, however remote, risk to health and the quality of life that the ruling party holds so close to its heart?

The use of Malta as a test bed for new technologies has worked in some sectors, with success, but this particular case in point should certainly not be one of them. The risks are simply too high.

If the new extension with its unproven technology, at the end of the day, results in yet more pollution for a country already gasping for fresh air given its extremely high levels of traffic pollution and pollution levels from its existing power generation installations – and the country is already facing EU action on both counts – what would be the cost, in terms of healthcare, that the country would have to meet?

The cost of healthcare is also already one of the government’s most potentially crippling financial considerations, and it is one that is bound to continue growing as the population ages, which it is doing rapidly as witnessed by demographic study after study.

A recent meeting of the asthmatics society heard how dust particle levels in Malta’s air is some 37 times more than what it should be. While the choice of technology to be used for the extension will certainly not solve the problem, but if unsuccessful, it could very well end up exacerbating it.

Concern for public health aside, and from a strictly economic viewpoint, can the state really handle a possible increase in the cases of asthma or indeed more serious afflictions such as cancer and other diseases that could be brought on by the kind of pollution generated by power stations?

Matters such as these need to be taken into serious consideration, as opposed to an exercise that would balance the books in the short term. Furthermore, and far more seriously, the government appears to be rolling the dice, with public health being the stake.

The Opposition deserves kudos for raging on about the extension for as long as it has been. But whether the Opposition’s opposition will result in anything tangible is highly doubtful.

As Opposition leader Joseph Muscat says in an interview in today’s issue, “The real debate is about how this government has changed environmental legislation and the rules of the game when it came to the tender… and now it has changed parliamentary rules in order to get this deal through – and it has done so at any cost.”

He is quite right, there is certainly something foul in the air, and the new extension is not even up and running yet.