Quality Freight Transport Partnership Agreement signed

A
partnership agreement between local stakeholders to find solutions to reduce
traffic congestion and Co2 emissions caused by freight vehicles has been signed
today at the Tarxien Local Council.

During
the meeting the partners Tarxien Local Council with Mayor Mr. Paul Farrugia and
Councillor Keith Darmanin, Paragon Europe with Mr. Andrea Demadonna (organizer
of the event), Eurofreight Ltd with Mr. Quentin Zahra, Local Wardens with
Authorised Officer Mr John Bonavia and GRTU with Ms. Carmen Borg stressed the
importance of bringing all stakeholders together to find ways of reducing the
impact on the environment that freight transport causes, whilst maintaining the
competitiveness of the sector in the industry. Tarxien mayor Chev Paul Farrugia
spoke about the initiatives such as a public forum and the involvement of the
Neighbourhood watch group to create public awareness and also involve the
citizens in the decision-making process.

The
Freight Quality Partnership is one of the key measures planned by the C-Liege,
an Intelligent Energy Europe Project partly co-financed by EACI and aimed at
empowering a cooperative approach between public and private stakeholders that
is targeted on the reduction of energetic and environmental impacts of freight
transport in European cities and regions. In order to reach this objective,
C-LIEGE will promote cleaner and energy efficient freight movements in urban
areas.

The
Freight Quality Partnership will consist of a permanent forum that will be
meeting every 3-4 months to discuss Freight Transport issues and will set a
strategy towards a better management of Freight Transport within the locality
of Tarxien through green  measures that
have successfully been introduced and implemented at EU level. The forum hopes
to convene in April for its first official discussion.

The
Freight Quality Partnership in Tarxien aims at offering key stakeholders the
possibility to meet and come up with concrete proposals and also disseminate
good practice such as loading and uploading bays in front of shops which are
present in some areas.  The forum will
represent the first of this kind in Malta and hopefully will attract the
interest of other Maltese localities.

Besides
the LFDP, the FQP will discuss other measures based on the C-Liege list of best
practices already in place in several EU cities.