Issue link: https://maltatoday.uberflip.com/i/1480970
NEWS 5 maltatoday | WEDNESDAY • 5 OCTOBER 2022 Justice Minister tables media reform Bills in parliament, shuns calls for more consultation Concrete plants accounted for 2.5% of all ground water extracted in 2019 CONTINUED FROM PAGE 1 The over-extraction of ground water comes at little cost for industry which only pays the energy costs needed to power the borehole but at a great cost to the environment due to increased salinity of this precious resource. The reply indicates that there was only one borehole used by concrete plants in 2014 and none before that date. But MaltaToday is informed that statistics prior to 2015 are somewhat unreliable as bore- holes were still in the process of being metered in that peri- od. Although boreholes used for commercial and agricultural purposes are metered, the re- source extracted is not charged by the government. Malta had 3,119 metered boreholes in 2019 which ex- tracted a total of 3,832,362 cu- bic metres. This means that while ac- counting for just 0.6% of all metered boreholes in Malta, in 2019 concrete plants account- ed for 2.5% of all ground water extracted. Metered boreholes represent less than half of Malta's 8,000 registered boreholes and their users are not charged for using the public resource. Statistics provided to Malta- Today by the Energy and Wa- ter Agency show that in 2019, extraction from 244 commer- cial, non-agricultural, bore- holes amounted to 833,004 cu- bic metres. This means that around 11% of this amount of water used by the non-agricultural sector is extracted by concrete plants. Metered abstraction from the 2,875 agricultural bore- holes amounted to 2,999,358 cubic metres. This means that the commercial sector, which includes water bottling com- panies, bowsers and concrete plants, accounts for a fifth of metered abstraction. KARL AZZOPARDI JUSTICE Minister Jonathan At- tard on Tuesday tabled in parlia- ment three Bills dealing with me- dia reforms and the protection of journalists. The Bills were seconded by gov- ernment Whip Andy Ellul and given a First Reading, which is a reading of the titles. One of the Bills deals with con- stitutional changes, another deals with several amendments to or- dinary laws, and the third deals with the set up of a security com- mittee. Attard unveiled the three Bills last week, three months after receiving feedback from a gov- ernment-appointed committee tasked to analyse the state of journalism in Malta. However, the Bills will not be presented for public consulta- tion, as requested in a letter to the Prime Minister by newspaper editors and journalists. Government took up almost 90% of recommendations made by the Committee of Experts, however, ignored or diluted some of the more important ele- ments proposed. The press experts committee was set up as recommended by the Public Inquiry into the as- sassination of Daphne Caruana Galizia. The proposed laws will request Parliament to recognise the con- stitutional protection of media sources, a long-held sacred tenet of journalism. However, govern- ment's final proposal only in- cludes this in one chapter of the Constitution that is not enforce- able at law. The Constitution will also rec- ognise the Fourth Estate in its ex- ercise of free journalism, to pro- tect freedom of expression. There will be redress of jour- nalists for bodily harm, recog- nised as an aggravated crime in the Criminal Code, but none for threats and harassments. Precautionary warrants have been removed from defamation cases and anti-SLAPP measures, which, however, have been criti- cised for not going far enough. A Media Reform Initiative group said that some of the com- mittee's most important propos- als were disregarded by govern- ment. The group, composed of cur- rent and former journalists among others, said that govern- ment "humiliated" its own com- mittee by disregarding 13% of its most significant proposals. In the proposed reforms, gov- ernment is including a consti- tutional clause that recognises the freedom of the media while vowing to protect and promote freedom of the media for the pro- tection of journalists and their sources. "Although these words are up- lifting, the government does not properly entrench these princi- ples by recognising the full set of rights that establish a free press and the corresponding obliga- tions of the State in Chapter IV of the Constitution," it said. The group pointed out that the declaration is not enforceable be- fore a court of law, and does not give you or the press any claim- able rights. "Had the govern- ment really wanted to recognize journalism as the fourth pillar of democracy it would have placed these provisions in section 41 of the Constitution and adopted at least the recommendations of its own Committee." Justice minister Jonathan Attard