Saviour Balzan | Wednesday, 22 October 2008

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Get Smart

The people involved in compiling Environmental Impact Assessments (EIAs) must be very happy with their savings. With all these daft ideas coughed up by the Gonzi administration, these scientists who love to be paid for telling people how many bugs you can find per square metre, are salivating at the prospect of the next impact study into the most recent White Elephant: Gonzi’s planned wind farm at is-Sikka l-Bajda.

Brilliant ideas
I remember the time when the PM had stated that we should have wind farms in deep water. Back then I had said that neither Gonzi nor his advisers knew what they were saying.
I said the same when he came out with that great idea about artificial islands, remember? I get these kind of bizarre ideas when I sing ‘That’s Amore’ in the shower every morning at eight. Thank God I am not the Prime Minister. I would shock everyone with my hare-brained ideas.
The company which carried out the impact study (EIA) on the build-yourself-an-artificial-island was paid Lm172,000. Yes, 172K.
So just because the PM decided to share his stupid suggestion with the rest of us, the taxpayer ended up paying Lm172,000.
When I had written what I had written. Edgar Galea Curmi – the PM’s personal assistant – was to say the least, peeved. “You have no faith in the Prime Minister’s vision,” he said.

Deep waters
Well, years later the PM has admitted that wind farms are not possible in deep water and has now come out with a similarly stupid suggestion of building a near-shore wind farm instead.
It is over the Sikka l-Bajda reef – an ecologically sensitive reef facing the top Natura 2000 site, l-Ahrax tal-Mellieha. Just two kilometres away from this reef is the main nesting site for the Yelkouan Shearwater: a bird which is protected, and included in the Birds Directive on the insistence of the Republic of Malta. The nesting site, which is home to 10% of the bird’s world population, currently receives hundreds of thousands in euros for its upkeep and preservation from the EU.
Of course, Edgar and his team of invisible advisors have forgotten all about this.
Yet apart from the birds and the birders, the idea of spending at least €130 million – and remember the government always underestimates its costs – to solve our energy problems is an exaggeration and a waste of money.
If you do not believe that the government is bad at accounts, just look at the overruns in the Manwel Dimech that ran into millions. Yes, millions.
If the wind farm were really built – and it won’t be – it would only meet some two to four per cent of all our energy needs. It is a waste of money.
It would be better to spend three million euros and give them to one of Malta’s leading advertising agency – for example, BPC – to launch a campaign to make people reduce their carbon footprint by 50%.
Now just for the record: Carmel Bonello of BPC should really be nominated as the saviour of all journalists. You may have heard that BPC was asking for a deposit of Lm1,000 (€2,300) if you ask a question about or to Smart City.
I guess BPC, being one of the main sponsors for the Institute of Maltese Journalists’ (IGM) trophy competition for journalists (the IGM, headed by another press guru, Malcolm Naudi who works with Kenneth DeMartino, of Group 4 fame) needs to make some cash to be able to sponsor journalists who feel they should nominate themselves to win a prize.
It is of course a joke. I am sure BPC make enough money from other activities.
But back to Gonzi. In 2005, in June to be precise, the man who means everything he says had promised artificial islands. This was after his idea that he would construct a golf course at Xaghra l-Hamra... only to realise that it was a bad idea.
He said, did he not, on Peppi’s TV show: “Judge me by what I have done!”
Good one. Because really and truly, of all the things he has promised none of them is really fruit of his own creativity.
And to add insult to injury, the impact study report for the golf course at Xaghra l-Hamra cost only Lm103,000, and an additional Lm23,922 went to the former MEPA official Adrian Mallia, who ran a company that specialises in EIAs.
Gonzi has not only been very good at coming up with incredible faulty ideas, but also very good at finishing other people’s projects and taking credit for them.
If it was Mater Dei, well, it was 17 years after Fenech Adami laid the first stone. If it was the Euro, it was part of Fenech Adami’s commitment laid out in 2003.
And so on and so forth.

Herceptin here we come
His junior minister Joe Cassar told me in Reporter last April that the breast cancer drug Herceptin (costing Lm20,000) will be available for cancer patients. It takes six friggin’ months for the PM to decide, and God only knows how much longer to issue and decide on a tender. If only cancer cells take that long to multiply...
I am not impressed.
The PM said with much fanfare in the last budget that he would introduce a breast- screening programme. Really? When? Can you give us a date, and if so, how?
In donkeys’ years from now he will probably get it done. Everyone would have forgotten what he had promised, when he had promised it and in what context.
And Pawlu Borg Olivier will probably wave his hands at the Granaries and praise his leader for getting things done.
There are many other issues which are simply forgotten. We hear for example about the success story of Maghtab and yet many readers may not know that Maghtab still burns on certain days, and that whole areas around Naxxar and Swieqi still suffer from aroma and fumes.

Blame it on Victor
The same applies to the hopeless public transport system in and around Malta. We blame the bus drivers. But really, Victor Spiteri – the man who captained the strikes this summer – is correct when he says that the government cannot really boast of being in favour of public transport, when it has been the same government’s policy all along to brag about how many private vehicles are imported annually into the country.
Well, I think I am feeling delirious. I think I should blame it on my cold and all these Panadols. I think I will just as well deposit Lm1,000 with Carmel Bonello and ask him one silly question about Smart City.
And if you don’t mind, I will share the question with all of you: “What does it take to Get Smart?”

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