The mess that is Malta

The Times of Malta reports that according to the finance minister, it is anticipated that the country’s population will grow to about 800,000 by 2040 at the current rates.

A passage from the article states, “We don’t just need to rethink and reform, we need to reinvent ourselves.

“We need structural change, not mere reform,” Finance Minister Clyde Caruana said, warning a new economic model needs to produce more value with less input and fewer pressures on Malta’s infrastructure. I totally agree.

Add to that the number of visitors who during peak months could be another 100,000 on any given day, and you’re looking at an insufferable ‘ants in an anthill’ or ‘bees in a honeycomb’ existence.

I know the article focused on the economy and sustainability and how to rethink our business model. But really?

We are now a population of 500,000, plus tourist visitors. Do you experience the traffic on the road, the overflowing buses, queues at bus stops? Do you see the mountain of waste we produce on a daily basis?

The bursting at the seams of services trying to cope with the present demand – the sewers, potable water, roads and traffic, rubbish collection, the air we breathe?

And all this while many communities and NGOs are constantly battling to safeguard public land and the little greenery left from being taken over for some individual’s gain.

This is happening as our standard of living and well-being is on a constant downward spiral.

Unless, of course, somebody is planning to extend the Maltese islands to double in area or construct a link to Sicily and mainland Europe, this is madness.

I’m not pretending to have solutions, but my excuse is that I’m not running this country. The government is. And yes, it needs to steer us intelligently. We vote in government, so technically we can all say (some more than others) mea culpa for this mess.

Ray Azzopardi – St Julian’s

Construction dangers

Wandering through the vast construction site that Gozo has now become, I often see workmen cutting and scraping limestone blocks and building bricks.

The workmen are invariably toiling away within a dense cloud of stone dust lacking any respiratory protection whatsoever, not even a handkerchief or scarf wrapped around their mouth and nose.

I have also seen carpenters sawing away at wooden planks, again, in a cloud of wood dust without even an attempt at respiratory protection. I sometimes stop to warn these workers about the dangers they face by inhaling large volumes of stone and wood dust.

The usual response is a shrug and a smile!

I am sure that a similar situation exists in Malta. There must be legislation concerning these dangerous activities, which is being flouted by our construction magnates.

Surely the authorities should enforce the law and insist that all building contractors provide adequate respiratory protection for their workers? We are incubating costly health problems for the future, although I suppose that since many of these workers are foreigners, it will then be someone else’s problem as they would have left our shores by the time they become respiratory cripples.

Charles Gauci – Sannat