Council appeals for public cooperation

Maintenance of Bugibba Square, forming part of the Lm3.5 million embellishment project which gave life to the area, seems to have defeated the local council.

Looking more shabby and unkempt than spick and span, not much improvement can apparently be hoped for it.

For St Paul's Bay council secretary Hector Cassar said when contacted yesterday that the council was well aware of the state of the square and the promenade but it could not do more than it was doing to keep it clean.

As it is, the light coloured paving is now closer to black than ever, and looking dingy. Sunday morning at 11 it was littered with cigarette butts, bits of paper and empty cigarette packets. Flattened blobs of chewing gum are commoner than summer flies and the paving is becoming stained.

The area is washed three times a month, and swept daily, litter is collected daily, including on Sundays and public holidays, and litter bins are emptied twice a day, according to the council secretary. The council spends around Lm150,000 a year in cleaning the place.

But the place remains as clean as people want it, the argument goes. It was useless for the council to spend thousands in cleaning if careless people dirtied the place as soon as it was cleaned, Mr Cassar said.

He called for an educational campaign to make people realise that the thousands being spent on cleaning were coming from their taxes.

Some people also seemed to enjoy vandalising the place, Mr Cassar said. Rubbish bins cost between Lm200 and Lm500 each. As the plastic ones were set alight, the council decided to install iron ones instead, but these were pulled out of place one night, damaging the pavement and the paving in the process.

Mr Cassar said that although the area was a pedestrian zone some cars had to be allowed in for delivery purposes and exhaust and oil dripped on the paving, staining it. This was very difficult to remove.

He said that one also had to realise that Bugibba was visited by 40,000 to 50,000 people at weekends.