MEPA employees sent home 'again' due to bad odour at Hexagon House

In a statement, PL Environment spokesperson Leo Brincat reiterated that employees cannot work at the Hexagon House due to the noxious smells and fumes.

“Even though almost fifteen days have passed since the first report was made, today Hexagon House was again subject to unpleasant odours, with the consequence that workers were given permission to leave and work from home,” Brincat said.

“This unbearable situation has now surpassed every limit,” he stressed.

Brincat said that if government is not able to ensure proper monitoring of facilities such as the waste oil near the Hexagon House, how can it guarantee effective monitoring of the environmental permit of the Delimara power station extension.

Brincat said that last week the Labour Party had both issued a statement and raised questions in Parliament on the issue. “Whilst the parliamentary secretary for the environment failed to reply, stating they had worked on other things which took a lot of time, MEPA issued a strained statement which said that workers were not evacuated but were given the permission to work from home if they felt the odours were a threat to their well-being,” Brincat said.

The Labour MP insisted that government should immediately probe into what was causing the odours and make sure that no adjacent buildings were breaking IPPC permit regulations.

“But to this day we still don’t know whether government did this or not,” Brincat said.