Minister Ian Borg today said that more work is needed to mitigate the effect of climate change which is leading to “extraordinary” circumstances such as those brought about by Thursday’s heavy rains.

Addressing journalists, the Infrastructure Minister said that more measures need to be put in place and implemented with regard to climate change. Even small countries like Malta need to do their part.

The priority on Thursday was to see that people in difficulty are helped, he said in reply to a question by The Malta Independent on whether the government is considering offering compensation to people who suffered damages. There will be time to discuss that (compensation) later on, he said.

What happened on Thursday was extraordinary, he said, with people who had never experienced flooding problems seeing it happen for the first time.

When roads are being planned, the effect of rainwater flowing through them is taken into consideration, but one cannot stop these natural phenomena from happening. What we can do is try to mitigate the effects, and this is what the government is doing, he said.

Truckloads of soil were carried onto Maltese roads on Thursday.

Asked why so much rainwater was wasted as most of it ended up in the sea, Minister Borg said that former Minister George Pullicino should be asked about this. The Labour government had carried out projects which aimed to collect rainwater for future use, but the €55 million spent by the Nationalist government in the past meant that rain water ended up being wasted in the sea, he said.