Issue link: https://maltatoday.uberflip.com/i/1101649
7 NEWS maltatoday | SUNDAY • 7 APRIL 2019 Post of Two (2) Clerks Permit Number 155/2019 with Malta Digital Innovation Authority (MDIA) Job Requirements and Responsibilities available at https://mdia.gov.mt/careers/ Applications through email careers@mdia.gov.mt. Closing Date of Application 15/04/2019. JAMES DEBONO ONE in every 50 scheduled bus trips in 2018 did not take place according to Transport Malta, which monitors the national bus service and imposes fines when the private operator fails to provide a service. "Malta Public Transport completed 98% of the trips scheduled in 2018," a Trans- port Malta spokesperson told MaltaToday when asked on the reliability of the service during the past year. As regulator, Transport Malta also imposed close to €170,000 in penalties for all the missed trips which occurred last year. This represents a slight im- provement over the past year. The average reliability during 2016 was 95% whilst that of 2017 was 97%. In 2017, Trans- port Malta issued penalties to the tune of €183,559. Since fines were introduced in April 2016, Malta Public Transport has been fined a to- tal of €436,000. Transport Malta monitors the reliability of the bus service by calculating the ratio between the actual number of trips ful- filled against those scheduled. The ratio is worked by gather- ing GPS data from all the buses in service, so that the ratio is actual and not just a sample. Although there has been con- siderable improvement over the past years, regular users still report hitches, delays and the occasional failure of the ex- pected bus to materialise. But the number of bus users has kept increasing also thanks to the increase in foreign workers. 2018 was a record year with almost 54 million passengers using the service. The first months of this year are, yet again, showing an increase in passengers, the TM spokesper- son confirmed. Bus operators fined €170,000 for missed trips in 2018 DAVID HUDSON THE Malta Communica- tions Authority (MCA) will only investigate the Chinese telecommunications giant Huawei's 5G testing on the island if it receives any direc- tion from the Environmental Health Authority. The Belgian capital Brus- sels halted all 5G testing due to a breach of the Belgian ra- diation standard of 95 mega- watts per square metre (or 9V per metre). The Brussels region has particularly strict radiation standards for telecom ap- plications. The standard of 6 volts per metre has already led to problems in the past with providing fast mobile internet via 4G in the capital. "I cannot welcome such tech- nology if the radiation stand- ards, which must protect the citizen, are not respected, 5G or not," Brussels region en- vironment minister Céline Fremault said. "The people of Brussels are not guinea pigs whose health I can sell at a profit. We cannot leave any- thing to doubt." Maltese company Melita already provides a 5G-ready mobile network, with Erics- son. But the MCA said that ser- vice providers and commu- nication networks in Malta were subject to a number of conditions, which includes the maintenance of electro- magnetic radiation levels from transmissions in line with standards established by the International Commis- sion for Non-Ionising Radia- tion Protection (ICNIRP) and the World Health Organisa- tion (WHO). In 2015, the Maltese govern- ment signed a memorandum of understanding with Hua- wei to launch 5G connectiv- ity, the latest generation of cellular mobile communica- tions. 5G packs in a high-data rate, and is energy saving, has a higher system capacity and massive device connectivity. MaltaToday was unable to get a comment from a Huawei spokesperson. Malta's parliamentary sec- retary for digital innovation, Silvio Schembri, said Malta was engaged with the EU to ensure both the availability of radio spectrum and to limit exposure to electromagnetic fields. "The EU has agreed on a broad set of measures to ensure a common approach across all member states in support of the deployment of 5G networks across Europe. 5G is recognised as a major enabler for future digital ser- vices and the Government is actively pursuing this com- mon approach to ensure its timely availability," Schembri said. Under a new proposal pub- lished last week, the EU's 28 countries have three months to carry out national risk as- sessments and then another 15 to tighten new pan-EU standards to protect the critical communications in- frastructure, under a Euro- pean Commission proposal published on Tuesday. The recommendation comes at a time when the EU is in a se- ries of rolling 5G spectrum auctions, and under growing pressure from the US to take a tough line and ban products made by Huawei and other Chinese technology business- es from sensitive systems over spying concerns. The European Parliament has also published an in-depth analysis on 5G deployment in the EU which admitted that electromagnetic radiation exposure was still a tentative area of discovery. "One as- pect, for example, that is not well understood today is the unpredictable propagation patterns that could result in unacceptable levels of human exposure to electromagnetic radiation," the study said. Biochemist Martin L. Pall, professor emeritus at Wash- ington State University, has insisted that there are many health risks associated with 5G technology. "Putting in tens of millions of 5G anten- nae without a single biologi- cal test of safety has got to be about the stupidest idea any- one has had in the history of the world," he has said, refer- ring to microwave frequency electromagnetic fields re- leased by 5G and which can produce widespread neu- ropsychiatric effects, includ- ing depression. dhudson@mediatoday.com.mt Brussels 5G scare sparks no action over Huawei in Malta In 2015, the Maltese government signed a memorandum of understanding with Huawei to launch 5G connectivity, the latest generation of cellular mobile communications. Silvio Schembri (left) said Malta is moving in line with EU recommendations on 5G