NEWS | Wednesday, 27 February 2008

Sant visits ‘dead’ flowers at Magħtab

Karl Schembri

A stand-alone golf course at Magħtab is still on the Labour Party’s cards even though the site has been earmarked as a recreational park by the current administration.
Labour leader Alfred Sant yesterday gave a press conference on the coast road to show journalists the dying trees and flowers just planted and which according to the Nationalist Party’s billboards should be blossoming soon.
Pointing at trucks entering the facility, Sant said the area was still being used as a rubbish dump despite the government’s claims that it was closed.
“We’re getting all this propaganda about how Maghtab will blossom with flowers, so we came here to see for ourselves how true this is,” Sant said. “As you can see rubbish trucks are still entering the site, so it’s not true that the rubbish dump has been closed. And the scene behind us shows the flowers are nothing but a political gimmick. They’re dying of toxic gases. The flowers are dying even before the election, when usually promises are left to die after the election.”
The site has been promoted and opened for the public in official open days as the Environment Landscape Consortium tries turning the mountain made of decades of rubbish and toxins into a park with over 2,000 trees and bushes.
But Sant said this was only a publicity stunt and promised to close Magħtab down, rehabilitate it and also open a golf course.
Asked for a date when the Magħtab dump would be fully closed if he is elected to government, Sant said experts would be asked to evaluate the site to get it closed “at the earliest date possible”.
Sant reiterated his belief that the area could be turned into a stand-alone golf course, besides the park that is being constructed. He was asked how golf turf could grow if, as he was saying, flowers were dying on site.
“We would close off the area in a serious manner, with a memberane and vents, not as is happening right now, with gases coming out from everywhere,” Sant said.
When asked if he intended razing Maghtab down Sant avoided the question but said later the gradients could be adjusted according to the golf course requirements.
Sant tried entering the Maghtab landfill but was stopped at the gates by personnel who told him he needed Wasteserv’s authorisation to be allowed inside.
A press release issued by Wasteserv later said that as a controlled facility, entry into Maghtab required “strict authorisation” in order to avoid safety hazards.
Another statement issued by the environment ministry slammed Sant for making conflicting statements in the same press conference.
“In the same breath, Dr Alfred Sant this morning said that the dump is still open, that he wanted to see the garden in Magħtab, that he wanted the works on the park started by this government to resume, and that he wants to incorporate his idea of a golf course with the existing proposal that Magħtab becomes a park,” the statement said.
And in yet another statement, Environment Landscape Consortium, which is entrusted with the trees planted on site, said the majority of the plants and trees were still healthy.
It said it would be speculation at this point to say that the trees were about to die as they required time to adjust to their new environment, while it would be a natural process for a small percentage of them to die in the process.