The Government has thrown the environment into the bin, the Nationalist Party said in a statement.

"After the courts in our country stopped it from awarding a €600 million tender to a consortium due to a clear conflict of interest by both the Evaluation Board and the Appeals Board, the Labour Government has persisted with its plan to award the tender to the same consortium," the PN said.

"This comes despite the Court ordering that the evaluation process be restarted from scratch, as the tendering process was found to be flawed and unfair. The Chief Executive of Wasteserv, Richard Bilocca, has stated that the country urgently needs this incinerator project to be completed and operational. He also pointed out that, according to his own assessment, the country is currently incurring fines amounting to hundreds of thousands of euros per month due to the failure to process waste properly."

This project was announced in February 2018 - seven years ago - and is still at the adjudication stage, the PN said. "However, Labour's incompetence in waste separation has been evident ever since it was elected to government in 2013."

"Because the Labour Government chose to rely on temporary solutions, it has once again had to extend the capacity of the Għallis landfill, prolonging its operational period instead of finding sustainable and effective solutions for waste management."

Now, in the case of the incinerator, the blame for what is happening lies solely with the Government, which has completely ignored the Court's order to halt the tender award to the selected consortium due to an obvious conflict of interest by the boards involved in the selection process, the PN said.

"Meanwhile, the Maltese people continue to suffer the consequences of not having a Waste-to-Energy plant due to the Government's stubbornness, which clearly shows that it is willing to discard both the environment and the health of the Maltese people in the bin, as long as it gets its way. The Maltese are not only paying for this with their health but also with their money, as this failure will cost the country thousands of euros in fines if the Government fails to honour its waste-related obligations to the EU."

"Past Nationalist Governments had a plan and were heading in the right direction when it came to waste and environmental management. Labour threw this plan into the sea because, for them, the environment is not important," the PN statement, signed by PN MPs Rebekah Borg, Eve Borg Bonello and Ryan Callus, read.