Henrik Piski, Spokesperson of IT and Telecommunication of Alternattiva Demokratika, the Green Party of Malta

There was a time when we used to drive, at least some of us, to the bring in sites to dispose of some parts of our waste in the appropriate containers hoping that these will be recycled accordingly. It was already a good idea, although I think that waste should be tackled at source. We should rather focus not purchasing products with excessive packaging, and re-use some of them when we do our shopping, like in former times. Since a few weeks, the Tuesday Waste Collection madness has hit the island. The waste which, as said, some of us use to separate and bring to the bring in sites, is now put in this nice yellow bags (more plastic again), un-separated. We still need to dispose ourselves of the glass. All these nicely yellow bags are collected once a week and sent to Wasteserv, where these are manually separated by poor unlucky workers. As on the photo shown in The Times of Monday 21st June on page 2, the workers lack of the basic health protections (no masks for example), being exposed to germs and bacteria! These poor people should be replaced by machines! I would also be great if we could get some information and figures: where is the waste exported to? Is it really recycled or just dumped in some third world country?

One of the duties of MEPA is to protect the health of the people. I am living amongst bakers in Qormi, of which several heavily pollute our direct environment causing health hazards to my family and myself. Since March last year, I have filed several police reports against these polluters, no action has been taken. I have approached the health department in Zebbug, no action has been taken. I have called several times to so called hot line of MEPA, never any MEPA employee managed to arrive on time on site to visit the bakeries. If ever, the visits have been taken place when the bakers were not working. Since three weeks, I am waiting for action to be taken by MEPA. Even if the oven is off, it is easy to verify what the bakers were burning by scratching particles from inside the chimney or outside of it and analyzing them. As one can clearly see from the picture taken yesterday evening, dense dark smoke is expelled from the chimney.

Wardens stop cars expelling excessive fumes and fine the drivers, MEPA does not stop and fine polluters, it even supports them by taking no action.

MEPA should be renamed into Malta Environment Destruction Agency, because that is the only the job it is excelling at.