The government has reduced the local councils’ autonomy to intentionally decrease their popularity in order to lead to further centralisation of power, Swieqi mayor Noel Muscat told The Malta Independent on Sunday.

In an interview with this media house, Muscat asked if over the last 10 years a single measure had been introduced by the central government that strengthened local councils and their ability to govern their localities.

He said that the competences of local councils have decreased over recent years, adding that their official names have been ironically amended to “local governments”, despite their inability to govern.

Muscat, elected on behalf of the Nationalist Party, is the second mayor approached by The Malta Independent on Sunday to highlight this decrease in autonomy for local councils. Last week, St Paul’s Bay mayor, Alfred Grima, who was elected on a Labour party ticket, also aired concerns about the autonomy of local councils. He said he does not plan to contest the 2024 local council elections for two reasons – one of which being that “nowadays, the local councils’ autonomy does not exist”. Further criticisms on this issue have also been mentioned by other members of the Nationalist Party as well as PN MP Darren Carabott and sociologist Dr Michael Briguglio.

Muscat said that local councils should regain the powers they have lost and more. Furthermore, he is frustrated that “rather than improving local councils and the service given, we have weakened them” and that despite their lost powers, residents still turn to the local councils and blame them for anything that is going wrong.

Muscat mentioned a healthcare service the Swieqi council had introduced that was halted due to the Covid-19 pandemic and which never restarted despite the Swieqi council’s wishes. The mayor said that all he requires to reignite the service is a doctor who can take blood pressure, perform quick checks and hand out prescriptions, if needed, so residents do not need to leave their locality for such simple check-ups. Muscat told The Malta Independent on Sunday that in a meeting with Local Government Minister Owen Bonnici, earlier this month, his request to bring back this clinical service was rejected after being told that the ministry does not do anything that is not “top-notch”, irrespective, he said, of the fact that the service had never received a single complaint before being forced to shut down.

As a result of reduced responsibilities, local councils now often need to contact the relevant authorities to deal with a complaint, rather than handle the complaint themselves. In this regard, the mayor described an episode in which, after receiving complaints about pavements and surrounding areas being covered in dust due to nearby construction works in the vicinity of a particular bar, he had tried to contact the relevant authority to fix this problem. The Swieqi mayor described how after receiving no reply from the Environment Minister at the time, he contacted ERA that told him that they couldn’t do anything about it. Muscat proceeded to contact the Ombudsman on this issue who then redirected him back to ERA. ERA once again told him that there was nothing they could do. No solution was found to address this issue, he said.

“Who defends the residents? Twenty-three parliamentary secretaries and ministers do nothing, others in authority do nothing, the local council can’t do anything and this is all done intentionally because they want the popularity of local councils to decrease – especially PN-leaning councils.”

When questioned whether this lost autonomy could be a detriment to the structural framework of local councils, the mayor explained what he believes is motivating this power shift. “We have these brave politicians, who are scared of losing power, and they want you to go and ask them for the favour – that’s what they want. So that’s why they took our autonomy so that it is they who will do the favour and you’ll have to say ‘ah, thank you minister’.”

He said that should this direction continue, people will see little need to vote in local council elections due to their imposed ineffectiveness. Muscat envisions that should this scenario come to be, central government will react by pushing for further centralisation, using the reasoning that people no longer support or want local governments, as evidenced by the lack of votes received.

On this notion, Muscat said that with so many competences being taken away from the councils’ jurisdiction namely waste and roads, they have been mainly reduced to “just collecting fines and giving permits to residents and receiving complaints”; following just two reforms over the last five years.

“I honestly believe it’s a strategy… or very incapable administrators,” he said.

The mayor explained that within government there exist some people in favour of local councils and some who are against their concept. He said he has interacted with some of these people who believe that having 68 local councils across Malta and Gozo is too many, and that resultantly, they believe in the concept of regions.

Muscat entertained the idea that some grouped small localities could function through a region, but he was adamantly against the concept of regional councils being applied towards larger localities. He might consider the idea for certain subjects, namely roads, to be managed on a regional basis rather than on a national basis, though he was not convinced.

"Give me (as the council) the powers and the human resources to do something; we'll do it willingly. We're not shying away from any responsibility – actually we want responsibility. But don't give me the problem without allowing me to solve it.”

Turning to other matters, Muscat is of the opinion that the site selection for Project Green initiatives – as part of the €700m designated for urban greening projects – is “absolutely political”. He believed that the government is favouring areas where it could gain a political advantage.

In this regard, the mayor discussed Swieqi’s overpopulation, saying that the locality has no public land other than four small public gardens for its 16,000 residents; this population makes Swieqi the sixth most populous locality in the Maltese islands.

The mayor recounted his efforts, over the last decade, where he has been asking government to purchase an undeveloped plot of land, adjacent to the Swieqi local council premises. Muscat wishes to turn this plot into a regional Art & Culture Centre with designated open spaces. The Swieqi mayor highlighted how Project Green is ideal for this proposal. Unfortunately, the officials in charge of Project Green saw an issue in the plot being private land, he said.

Muscat questioned how this could be an issue considering the enormous €700m fund to be spent by the agency over the next seven years. He also highlighted how after presenting the project proposal to Project Green CEO Steve Ellul, during their only meeting, Ellul failed to respond to any of Muscat’s follow-up emails.

“Now they issued the first list of projects and I keep asking ‘are we included?’. No reply. Obviously, we are not. No, it is all political, believe me; it is where the minister can get the votes.”

“So there’s a plot of land in the heart of a locality that has no open spaces and which is overpopulated. What would common sense dictate? The PN in the last general election had made it a point that this land would be purchased.”

Swieqi’s lack of public land brought the discussion to Wied Għomor – a valley that was initially promised public domain status by former Environment Minister Josè Herrera back in 2017, though Muscat explained that it remained as is after the minister missed the application deadline to begin this process. Wied Għomor is still waiting for its public domain status, despite Herrera having told the Swieqi mayor at the time that they were to go through with it the following year, Muscat said. Muscat attributed that the main reason to this indefinite delay was the backlash former Minister Herrera received from the valley’s landowners. Mayor Muscat said he could only hope that Wied Għomor does not get developed “because the decision to stop any development has not been taken”.

Transitioning towards Swieqi’s overdevelopment, the mayor lambasted planners and was saddened to say that “we are creating an expensive jungle”. Moreover, Muscat was very critical on the short-sightedness of planners in this country. Muscat detailed how his local council had contacted years ago the authorities on growing issues that today have turned into crises.

“The problem with the locality is that the construction and increase in population is not balanced by an equal amount of support from either open spaces, accessibility into the locality and parking issues, causing a lot of confusion. You cannot just construct and increase the population without improving all the services that that very same population requires.”

While talking about excessive construction, the mayor put a spotlight on planners while referencing the infamous 5+1 construction rule. The mayor of Swieqi disapproved of this overall planning direction and was disheartened to say that no one thought about improving Swieqi’s accessibility, open spaces or number of parking spaces.

Relating to restricted accessibility into Swieqi, the example of the recently announced Pembroke Junction Project came up, as the mayor’s criticisms on the government’s lack of long-term perspective continued. After original plans for St Andrew’s Road were shelved, it was announced last Sunday that two hairpin turns were to be constructed to improve traffic flow from both directions. The mayor however, believes that improvements to traffic flow will only be temporary.

“It is not going to solve the problem. It is going to just alleviate the problem for the main flow of traffic for a couple of years but it is going to be detrimental to the residents of Swieqi who are going to find it difficult to enter and exit the locality. They have done improvements on what we said, so it will be a bit better than they originally planned; but definitely it is not going to solve the problem in the 10-20 years to come.”

Reiterating that Swieqi is already overpopulated, the mayor was distraught to imagine how the issues of traffic, waste, development, quality of life and overpopulation are going to worsen with current trends.

Following his worries about the ongoing overdevelopment in and around his locality, the mayor was asked whether the lack of green/open areas in Swieqi is already affecting the quality of life of residents. He said that the council is aware that this is an issue, even though they do not explicitly receive complaints about it. Since they have no public land, the local council attempts to include some greenery in any project that is undertaken. Due to the town’s lack of open space and public land, the council apparently has no space to plant 10 trees if they were offered to them. Muscat pinned the fault of this situation to deficient planning.

The final point of this interview saw the mayor describe the lawlessness he perceives in Malta, mentioning issues such as dumping, reckless driving and other issues.

“The sense of lawlessness in this country is unbelievable – people aren’t even afraid to do wrong anymore,” the mayor said. To finish his point, he referenced the havoc one may encounter in Swieqi’s roads through dangerous driving, and more notably, e-scooters from their initial introduction into the Maltese islands.

He critically described the inefficiencies behind the introduction of e-scooters locally; specifically, how their licences were first issued without legislation being in place, and then how legislation eventually came in without providing these vehicles with parking bays, which he said resulted in the present situation of e-scooters blocking pavements besides the other common occurrence of many scooter riders failing to abide by traffic rules like perilously riding down the wrong way of one-way roads through the middle of the street.

Earlier this month, Muscat was part of the group of three Nationalist Party mayors from the Northern Harbour region (or the Eastern region within the composition of regional councils) who called for stricter enforcement and legal reform to fight the so-called “national waste crisis”. The mayor said that a different strategy is required to tackle this crisis than what is currently being done. Iterating how educational programmes are only being listened to by “the converted”, Muscat believes that a very aggressive stance by the authorities should be taken to tackle the ongoing waste problem. He mentioned that the local council receives complaints about several repeat offenders and therefore believes that heavy fines are needed to deter these bad habits. He repeated what was said in the aforementioned press conference on the national waste crisis, detailing that the inhabitants of short-let apartments in the locality are the most likely residents that fail to abide by the waste collection schedule.