Swieqi mayor Noel Muscat has strongly criticised the government’s handling of local councils in an interview with The Malta Independent on Sunday, arguing that the councils have been reduced to a customer complaints division.

Infrastructure Minister Ian Borg himself recently said that the decision his Ministry took to take control of roadworks from the councils had taken a weight off the councils’ shoulders and allows them to allocate their budgets elsewhere to help more residents. Councils still have the ability to carry out roadworks but there are funding issues as there always have been, said Muscat.

Infrastructure Malta is heading up governments plan to resurface 700 roads over the coming years. Mr Muscat disagrees with the situation and believes that more funding for roadworks should have been made available to local councils, rather than Infrastructure Malta handling such work, because the local councils would be better able to assess priority areas. He also said that this situation affected the autonomy of such councils.

“It’s taking away the autonomy of local councils”, said the Swieqi mayor. “If you take away from them responsibility for roads, what other responsibilities do they have? Potholes, street lights, rubbish collection? Why should the central authorities decide which roads should be resurfaced in a locality and when, and by which contractor? I have so far seen two roads being resurfaced this past summer: one of these was a very good road compared to others, and should not have been resurfaced yet. Yes, resurfacing it was positive regardless, but was it the right priority? In another instance they started working on a road without telling us that they were starting. Nobody called us beforehand to discuss traffic management.”

Mr Borg highlighted lax consultation by Infrastructure Malta.  Asked if they consulted, he said: “Not by what I understand ‘consultation’ to be. For some people, being called on the telephone is consultation.”

There have also been situations when the council was not even informed as to which roads were included for resurfacing in a tender.

Highlighting that finance issues that local councils face when it comes to roadworks, Mr Borg said: “We, as a council, resurfaced a road three years ago which cost us €75,000, and we went into a deficit to do it. I knew I was able to make up that deficit in two years but I had to compromise the funds of the following year. What we needed was funds, as roads are a consumable and they wear away.”

He was asked whether, with roads now being the responsibility of the Authority, any councillor or Mayor would criticise the Minister responsible. “No, because they won’t do the roads we need. So we are now begging and thanking him for what he has done. Should it be like this? Should you depend on the whim of the Authority? I’m talking long-term here. Shouldn’t we be more autonomous, more of a local government? Local councils have been reduced to a customer complaints division: it’s a very great pity. Tell me one initiative that has strengthened the autonomy of councils?”

 

Are local councils not in charge of waste collection, which is quite an important job?

“We are involved in cleanliness and waste collection, yes. But we haven’t been given more power. It’s always been in the remit of councils to collect garbage and bulky refuse and to sweep the streets. The government is embarking on organic waste separation. In November 2015, five councils joined the scheme, with another five in 2016.

“With a waste separation schedule, people coming to Sweiqi from other localities to work, for example, don’t understand the organic waste separation. So they just mix everything together. That was one of the biggest problems.

“Another major problem was that government did not help us at all after the scheme’s implementation. In the two-and-a-half years since we introduced the scheme, not one fine has been issued, and we continually informed the departments which apartments were causing the problems.

“We met the then Tourism Minister, Edward Zammit Lewis, to propose a solution. We knew that the main issue was with short-let flats and the cleaners of such flats, because they did not know about the scheme and were just taking the normal garbage bags out. 

“We suggested that the flat administrators should also be responsible for the cleanliness of the pavements, as they would know which flats were short-let and which were not. If I see a bag of rubbish on a pavement in front of flats, how am I supposed to know who took it out?  

“We tried to tackle the issue, first by leaving notes in letterboxes. But then we realised that if they are short-let flats, the people living there wouldn’t even open the letter-box. We undertook a process to learn about the situation and took our suggestions to the Ministry, who liked our ideas. But two years down the line, they should have done it by now.”

 

You mentioned that local councils don’t have that much power. What kind of powers should they have in today’s day and age? With regard to finances, there have been councils in the past who have gone into the red. How do you control that situation?

“Just because some councils have failed does not mean that all them are. You need to see why a particular council went into the red and resolve that problem, not remove the autonomy of councils. If they went into the red because they built or resurfaced roads, then it was not the right thing to do, but it was out of the will to do something good that  something bad happened. I had committed us to go into a deficit I knew we could get out of with the aforementioned road for example.

“There is nothing wrong with failing, but it should be corrected. You don’t stop other councils because some mayors were not up to scratch.  Who says all MPs, doctors, lawyers, etc.,  are up to scratch? But you don’t just give up. There are a lot of former mayors in Parliament now. Local councils are an important tool that should be enhanced instead of having their status reduced. People want local councils and they have a right to them.

“In the past, when there were no local councils, you would have to call the Minister to get a street light repaired, which would then be done as a favour. Should it still be like that?

“To be clear, I’m talking about local government, not central government. We don’t deal with healthcare, education or tourism. We might collaborate on these but we do not create them ourselves. We manage a locality in the best possible way. Garbage, roads and lighting are the main things, so don’t take responsibility for roads away. I personally feel that councils should be closer to residents and should help people according to their needs.

“There is active talk of turning the areas for which local councils are responsible into regions, which I don’t agree with. Swieqi’s neighbours are Pembroke, Għargħur, San Ġwann and St Julian’s. We are totally different. How can Swieqi manage Għargħur when the culture is totally different.”