Death certification

According to law, on the death of any person, the physician or surgeon in attendance during the last illness who, of his own personal knowledge or from information obtained from any other person, is aware of such death shall, without delay, give notice thereof to the officer in charge with the duty of drawing up the act of death, or to any adult member of the family of the deceased, to be transmitted to the same said officer.

If the deceased was not attended by a physician or surgeon, the family members of the deceased are obliged to give such notice.

I know of someone whose death remained unregistered for months.

The notice of death had, for some reason, not been passed on as the law prescribes. The deceased kept receiving social benefits and his bank accounts remained open.

Incidentally, I know of a case where the police called at the residence of the deceased upon his sudden death at night upon their being called by the physician in attendance.

This is bad law.

It should be amended to the effect that the death notice, following the drawing of a death certificate, is to be transmitted by an authority to another authority.

The two relevant authorities in this case are the health department and the public registry.

Otherwise, there could be more deceased alive and around.

EMILY BARBARO-SANT – Mosta

New noun

Photo: Shutterstock.com

My wine bottle container was full, so I took it to the waste disposal unit here in Għajnsielem.

As I dropped in my 26th empty bottle, I began to feel a little embarrassed, which gave thought to a collective noun.

Therefore, I would propose the adoption of this collective noun for a pile of empty wine bottles. Let us call it an “Embarrassment”.

Terry Bate – Għajnsielem

Our national airline

Once again, the CEO of Ryanair is trying to portray his airline as a future national airline for Malta under the guise of telling us that airports served by KM Malta Airlines in the future will also be covered by Ryanair.

After all Air Malta went through and, finally, we salvaged a national airline, known today as KM Malta Airlines, which, I am proud to say, offer a very good service, the government should make it clear that even through partial privatisation we should be proud to have KM Malta Airlines as our national airline.

All the other air carriers are free to operate but our national airline should remain purely ours.

Wishing it all the success and it seems we are on the right track.

I, for one, am proud to be a regular user of our national airline.

Michael Vella – Sliema