Saturday, 19th July 2008
As you wait to be served
We have been frequent visitors to Gozo for more than 20 years and we usually take home a good supply of Maltese currency in notes as where we live these have to be ordered in advance. This has now turned out to have been a thoroughly bad policy. The Central Bank of Malta decreed - doubtless for its own convenience - that exchange into euros could only be effected at the Central Bank in Valletta after the end of February.
So a special trip to Valletta to change the old lira on May 15 - we pitched up at the Annex of the Central Bank at 10 to find a queue snaking out of the door, only one (!) cashier in action and a potential wait of up to two hours.
I was informed by a receptionist wearing the smug face of officialdom that I could speak to the manager if I wanted to. I did want to and she informed me that she was suffering from a "shortage of staff and that the Governor himself had just been down to assess the situation".
Nothing for it then but to stand in the queue for two hours or keep Gozo ferries solvent by coming back another day. Drinks trolleys pushed by Central Bank minions passed to and fro, presumably for the refreshment of further unseen minions, but during our long wait nobody so much as offered us a glass of water.
This, far more than all the empty ministerial cant about the importance of tourism to the economy, shows what one really thinks of foreign visitors. Surely it was not beyond the wit of the Central Bank to nominate at least one commercial bank across the islands to exchange on its behalf until the close of the first tourist season following conversion. Here in Luxembourg it is still possible to take old francs to a retail bank (as long as you are a customer of that bank) for exchange into euros. And we converted to the euro at the end of 2000!
The population of Luxembourg is about the same as that of the Maltese islands. I suggest that the whole process was insufficiently thought through and that the Governor of the Central Bank owes us a formal apology.
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Comments
You have conditioned yourselves to be cowed by Authority,thats the problem!
Mr Alder has as much right to complain as I have.
I think your problem started when we tried to accomodate the likes of you a lot better by changing over to euro a currency that you will not have to order in advance in your country. Obviously by trying our best to accomodate you better, we still got it in the neck, maybe we shouldn't try to please the likes of you so much. If you are used to drinks trolleys pushed by Bank minions for the customers in your country, you must be using a different bank than i was cause i certainly didn't see any in Luxumber.
I am glad that we finally sorted out your problem and next time you come to visit you don't have to go the bank wasting your time, but spend your time on the beach spending your euros in the maltese island instead of bringing them back to luxumberg with you.
Dear Mr.Robin M.H. Alder, of Luxembourg, I do travel a lot and in not other country have I been treated any different to the locals.....so please you are a guest in my country like I myself am when I travel abroad, and accept it. We might not have the best solutions, but we manage. Thank you very much for your tips....................................