Wasteserv blames public for latest Magħtab blaze as mismanagement continues

In a surreal statement following the latest blaze at its “engineered” landfill in Magħtab, Wasteserv, the state entity responsible for processing Malta’s waste, blamed poor household waste separation for the latest fire in a waste site.

At the same time, the entity, which falls under the political responsibility of Minister Miriam Dalli and is led by CEO Richard Bilocca, failed to hold anyone accountable for the mismanagement of its own site.

The flash fire, which Wasteserv said “spread within seconds as a result of a strong vortex of air” and “highlights the importance of proper waste disposal”, forced residents in nearby Buġibba, St Paul’s Bay, Salini and Qawra to remain indoors for several hours while firefighters from the Civil Protection Department (CPD) battled to contain the toxic blaze.

The latest incident continued to highlight Wasteserv’s negative track record in Maghtab and other sites while the island continues to struggle in managing its waste streams.

Since September of last year, the CPD’s firefighters had to respond to ten industrial fires across Malta, each of which blanketed nearby localities with hazardous pollutants and required millions of litres of water to extinguish.

According to the CPD’s press releases, firefighters had to respond to industrial fires in Burmarrad, Kalkara, Ħal Għaxaq, Marsa, San Ġwann, Birkirkara, Dingli, Mqabba, and in Magħtab earlier this week.

In its response to the latest toxic incident, Wasteserv said that “Events like this continue to highlight the importance of proper waste disposal, how flammable materials such as batteries, even if small, should never be disposed of in the black bag.”

“This is also a stark reminder of the urgent need to move away from landfilling,” the company added.

Wasteserv has been trying to build an incinerator at Maghtab for the last decade, only to mismanage the project every time it issued a tender.

Sources who spoke to The Shift while the Magħtab site burned for hours said that tourists and staff members of hotels in the surrounding localities were “gassed and smoked out”. Ironically, the latest incident happened only three days after Wasteserv CEO Richard Bilocca penned an opinion article in the Times of Malta boasting of the company’s recent successes.

Malta’s waste management problems have been building up for years, in no small part due to extensive delays to government projects which were meant to alleviate the burden on the country’s outdated infrastructure.

Ten years since it was first promised, Energy Minister Miriam Dalli confirmed in Parliament that a waste-to-energy incinerator in the Magħtab site will not begin construction this year after a series of legal disputes over how a €600 million contract was mishandled.

Shortly after the massive tender was adjudicated to a consortium led by the Prime Minister’s former business partners, Bonnici Group, the same consortium pulled out of the deal and the tender was struck down by the Courts.

Both Dalli and Bilocca are yet to state when the planned incinerator is now expected to be in place, as new emerging technology, including waste-to-chemicals infrastructure, now threatens to make the incineration model almost entirely obsolete.