More than €500,000 are being invested in a scheme that will enable 260 Birżebbuġa residents to replace their old windows with double glazed ones for better protection from the surrounding noise pollution.
The scheme is being wholly funded by the Freeport Corporation and will be managed by the Regulator for Energy and Water Services, Energy Minister Miriam Dalli and Economy Minister Silvio Schembri said on Thursday.
Announcing a similar scheme in September 2019, then Tourism Minister Konrad Mizzi had said Birżebbuġa residents are to be offered a grant of up to €2,000 for double glazing as part of a government drive to reduce the inconvenience of noise pollution from the nearby Freeport. Residents in 33 streets had been eligible to benefit from that scheme.
The law speaks clearly of maintaining “high standards in public life”. The people expect and deserve no less, particularly as they continue to learn about the disdainful manner in which politicians and senior civil servants can behave.
The main responsibility to ensure these high standards are maintained falls squarely on the shoulders of the commissioner for standards in public life.
In late 2019, the office issued a document themed ‘Towards higher standards in public life’, authored by the present commissioner, George Hyzler, and his director-general, Charles Polidano.
In its introduction, the report notes that although the constitution supports ethical standards in public life it does not spell out such standards in detail but shapes them and shores them up through the general principles it sets out and the safeguards by which it seeks to uphold them.
The following are the main stories in Wednesday’s newspapers.
Times of Malta says Prime Minister Robert Abela has confirmed bars will not reopen as plann
Updated at 10.35pm, adds Repubblika statement
A press release from Economy Minister Silvio Schembri represented a breach of ethics, given that ministers are ob
It was a record-setting year for
Times of Malta, as Malta’s number one news site climbed into the world’s top 3,500 websites.
Those numbers were reflected in the attention given to individual articles, many of which were read by several tens of thousands of people.
Live blogs of major court sessions - think Joseph Muscat or Keith Schembri as witnesses - captivated audiences, as did our days-long coverage of COVID-19 developments and our rolling coverage of Robert Abela’s dominant victory in the Labour Party leadership race.
Elsewhere in politics Economy Minister Silvio Schembri’s shock “foreigners will go back to their countries” speech in parliament attracted huge interest, and readers also lapped up news that Adrian Delia had lost an important confidence vote within the PN.