Letters to the editor – August 18, 2024

Gross pension miscalculation

Some eight days before this year’s local and European elections, the social policy minister proudly, rather than ashamedly, announced that a miscalculation had revealed that the actual number of pre-1962-born pensioners benefitting from the 2024 budget measures to address the pension anomaly was 25,000, not circa 10,000, as had been stated through the media since Budget Day.

The discrepancy is mind-boggling, and, at the risk of being branded condescending, I dare spell out that the misjudgement is not a mere two-and-a-half per cent out but a solid two-and-a-half times over the original calculation.

The incredulous position prompts the question. If budget funds were restricted, prohibiting a higher payment to 10,000 pensioners (the anomaly payment being staggered over a period of years, during which time many beneficiaries will have passed away), where is the money to pay out 25,000 persons coming from?

Social Policy Minister Michael Falzon. Photo: Chris Sant Fournier

Like most Maltese, I spent a career in the private sector. Had such a blatant error been made in any circumstance, the persons responsible would promptly and unceremoniously been given the order of the boot. I have seen too many people in management positions sacked for much less than that.

In reality, however, miscalculations of this magnitude very rarely, if ever, happen in the private sector.

Surprisingly, they are discovered in the public service sector and, then, coincidentally only a few days before an upcoming election. Social Policy Minister Michael Falzon defended the ensuing criticism, rather unsuccessfully, by stating the government is not bound to abstain from sharing welfare news simply because an election was round the corner.

And he expects to be credible. 

The trouble with this minister and the government in general is that they believe the country is full of village idiots. Admittedly, there are thousands in the folds of the main political parties. Inversely, there are many more thousands who are not.

Minister, you cannot fool some of the people not even some of the time. Please, stop trying and stop adding insult to injury.

Victor A. Pisani – Santa Luċija

Concrete obsession

The idea that a public garden has to have ‘runways’ of concrete paving, as in Ta’ Qali, or extensive areas of marble/hardstone paving and flower beds, as in Valletta’s moat – now, sadly, called the Ditch – is absurd.

It is happening in every open public space possible. It can only be intended to spend the maximum amount of public and EU money on concrete and asphalt suppliers and contractors who are, obviously, very grateful to the ‘authorities’ and their friends.

By the way, the flower beds in the ‘Ditch’ do not have a single plant or flower. So long as the concrete and the paving are done, hooray.

I am bewildered at the rate our authorities continue to cover more and more of our precious and limited land surface.

Apart from the hundreds of kilometres of roads, often including any space available along the sides of the roadway, paved with asphalt and concrete wall to wall, the few areas that are public gardens or landscaped areas are paved in concrete, marble or hardstone to ensure that not a drop of the precious little rain falling on the ground hits the underlying natural surface or soil.

Even in our limited countryside, small country lanes have been widened and the maximum amount of concrete or asphalt possible poured, again wall to wall. Goodbye to the roadside, endemic plants that formed an important part of our landscape and natural habitat.

Joseph Philip Farrugia – Mellieħa