The Parliamentary Secretary for Public Cleanliness, Glenn Bedingfield, has written online that the waste-filled wedding site near the Red Tower in Mellieħa has been cleared up by government workers “even though this should have been done by others,” he said.

In response, the Malta Ranger Unit – the NGO that initially publicized the mess left behind in this private wedding – has lamented that taxpayers have essentially footed the bill for this clean-up.

Parliamentary Secretary Bedingfield noted in his online post that “We can’t leave piles of garbage like that” and that he shall be opening discussions with all the relevant entities in order to develop a system that places more responsibility on the organisers of similar and larger events.

The Cabinet member also said that he had enough of this “lack of respect” and “brushing off of responsibility by those who are supposed to bear it.”

After welcoming the announcement that the area has now been cleaned, the Malta Ranger Unit stated that it does not agree “with the fact that seemingly the Maltese Tax payers had to foot the bill.” This statement was made earlier this morning, a day after the MRU filed a police report into this story.

The independent NGO condemned how this “wasn’t just any event, it was a luxurious wedding with over 1000 guests, many of them Government officials.” The Minister for Tourism and Public Cleanliness, Clayton Bartolo, was photographed as one of the notable guests at this wedding.

The Malta Ranger Unit has said that “the offender should have been called to come back and clean it up. Piece by piece.” In this regard, the rangers also noted that the wedding organiser was very well-known, had “promised the media to leave the place spotless,” and that they could have afforded to pay for an urgent cleaning service to clean up the waste left behind.

The rangers questioned why the wedding organiser was not contacted to clean up the site themselves.

The Malta Ranger Unit also remarked that the aforementioned required system described by PS Bedingfield already exists in local law as the subsidiary legislation SL. 549.40, and therefore, that “it just has to be enforced.” It continued that according to the law, “Any event organiser organising an event in the public space, has 24 hours to clean after the event finishes.”

“The law is clear,” the NGO said.

The MRU concluded their statement by calling for the budget for the police’s Environmental Protection Unit (EPU) to be increased, for the Gozitan EPU police to have more than the present zero officers within their respective unit, and for all cases to be treated equally, “no matter who the offender is.”

Photo: Glenn Bedingfield/Facebook