Swieqi Mayor Noel Muscat believes that people who ignore waste collection regulations and do not care about the waste collection schedule will only stop doing so once they are fined heavily.

During an interview with this newsroom, Muscat was asked about waste and garbage dumping in his locality.

"There is a solution, but it has to be very aggressive - otherwise there isn't one".

He said that related educational programmes are only followed by those who already adhere to the waste collection schedule. In addition, he highlighted the ineffectiveness of these educational programmes in resolving this problem, saying that the people exacerbating the garbage issue are clearly not paying attention to these programmes.

Mayor Muscat said that those people who haphazardly take out their rubbish without a care for the waste collection schedule are often repeat offenders who would only stop once heavily fined.

"If we're [just] going to hold educational programmes, it's not going to work at all", exclaimed the Swieqi mayor.

On 9 August, 2023, Muscat formed part of the Nationalist group of mayors, councillors, and regional council members who took local journalists around some localities in the Northern Harbour region of the island to highlight the issue of rubbish in the streets and call attention towards what they described as the ongoing "national waste crisis".

During this press conference, several mayors, including Muscat, pinned the blame for this waste management crisis onto two groups: people living inside blocks of short-let apartments and the government for its lack of long-term policy towards these inhabitants. Others present in this press conference were the President of the Eastern Regional Council, Anthony Chircop, St. Julian’s mayor Guido Dalli, Sliema mayor John Pillow, PN Coordinator for Local Councils Charles Bonello, as well as some other councillors from the same areas.

The group had questioned whether fines are being given out proportionately, considering the gravity of the situation. Moreover, they called for more fines to be handed out to people taking out the wrong types of waste at incorrect days and times.

Muscat, during the interview, noted that they know of certain hotspots that are regularly seen with rubbish bags piling over each other in sizeable heaps.

Muscat told The Malta Independent about one of these hotspots and how he had recently dedicated a Facebook post to naming and shaming the apartment block of perpetrators. Muscat said that he had already informed both ERA and MTA about them, pleading to them for serious action to be taken.

The Swieqi mayor said that this was a block of short-let apartments with repeat offenders, and he even told ERA and the MTA to close it down. “You either follow rules, or don’t. For how much longer can we keep going on like this?”

Muscat then addressed a major difficulty in the enforcement of this careless waste management. He mentioned drawbacks he’s faced in the Council’s attempts to improve enforcement around hotspots to take action against the unknown culprits.

He discussed the difficulties he encountered when trying to work with the relevant authorities to eye out these fixed points. He described how the police told him that they could not afford to send a policeman to stay at these fixed points for several hours. It was also mentioned that LESA had informed him that they did not have the people to perform this task, stating that they could only offer for an official to be on standby at one of these fixed points for an hour every 3 weeks. The mayor and the council are therefore still struggling to identify which particular residents from these blocks of apartments are truly exacerbating this issue.

In frustration at the failed enforcement attempts so far, the mayor commented, “You see what [...] is happening in Malta? There aren’t enough resources for anything; there aren’t enough police, LESA officials, enough MTA officials - there isn’t enough of anything.” These comments came in the context of other comments the mayor made during the interview about overpopulation and overdevelopment within his locality.

Due to the issue of local councils’ retracted autonomy, local councils no longer have the jurisdiction to tackle this issue themselves, he said; the subject of waste management now falls under the responsibilities of the regional committees.

First part of the interview was carried yesterday