Opposition leader gets hands-on for the environment

Opposition leader Adrian Delia, like other MPs, may have been banned from yesterday’s environmental protest in Valletta but he nevertheless lent a helping hand to the environment.

The Nationalist Party wants the natural environment to become part and parcel of the Maltese economy and a tool to be used for sustainable development, he said at a clean-up activity yesterday.

Such a model would be more just and contrary to what is happening today under a Labour government, Delia said in St Paul’s Bay.

Despite free services such as bulky refuse collection, several zones are used for illegal dumping, meaning that more needs to be done to raise environmental awareness.

Delia said that more and more plastic is ending up in the sea, and the PN is therefore campaigning for a drastic reduction in single-use plastics. This requires more investment in research towards an alternative to plastic and the use of sea-bins.

He said it is not enough to protect sites, but this should be coupled with better management and a more sustainable use of land and sea.

Delia paid tribute to the environmental organisations which yesterday organised a protest in Valletta. The PN did not take part in the activity, according to the organisers’ wishes, but the party supported their call for long-term planning.

He said that Malta needs to rehabilitate areas negatively affected by illegalities and for these areas to be returned to the public. Several projects in zones earmarked by the government to be converted into public areas have not been completed, simply because the government’s priority is not to improve the environment, but to uproot trees and widen roads.