Alternattiva Demokratika (AD) chairperson Harry Vassallo yesterday said that with his party in a coalition government, residents who suffer from inconveniences caused by neighbouring businesses would be supported with timely and effective remedies.
“Since the inception of AD, but specifically over the past five years, groups of residents, entire localities and at times families have resorted to ask AD for help after unsuccessfully using every measure available to them – such as reporting to the police and consequently taking legal action,” Vassallo said.
“It is unacceptable that certain people profit at the expense of their neighbouring residents’ quality of life. We have always supported anyone who we felt was right.”
Identifying an intrinsic problem with local and national structures, Vassallo claimed that “the police and the courts are not equipped enough to ensure that residents enjoy the peace, quiet and health they are entitled to.”
Vassallo went on to mention the case of hard-stone manufacturing plant Blokrete, which has been involved in a legal squabble with its neighbouring residents in Lija for the past four decades.
In December last year, AD had organised a petition among the affected residents, calling on the European Ombudsman to intervene in a situation AD said was caused by “different governments (that) have been submissive to the commercial interests at stake in this breach of the law” with a result of “a high incidence of asthma among Lija children and adults.”
Vassallo recommended the removal of operational licenses of “all those quarries that persistently store mounds of dust in the open air, in residential areas.”
“We promise a revision of Malta’s legislation and of the way it is enforced,” he continued, proposing the installation of a specific apparatus outside business establishments to measure decibel levels, ensuring they do not exceed those stipulated by law. “This would guarantee an objective reading of the inconvenience,” he said, adding that it would also rule out the possibility of abusive complaints.
AD candidate Carmel Cacopardo explained that this issue is “due to the way MEPA assigns permits to commercial activity in mixed-use zones. Residents end up going into serious expense in order to prove that noise is causing an inconvenience, when MEPA is equipped to anticipate the problem in the first place.”