Hazardous pavements

Pavements or sidewalks are necessary but many are not fit for purpose and actually dangerous. Several people continue to be injured on badly made, not maintained and abused pavements.

Gertrude Abela’s letter ‘Dangerous pavements’ (August 12) shows just one of the many deficiencies in the pavements of Malta and Gozo. Some pavements are too narrow for use by two people abreast or one using a wheelchair or pushchair, too many are deformed, interrupted or obstructed by garage ramps and many others are structured in sections, individualised to fit different house frontages using different styles, widths and heights!

To make things worse, there may be encroaching poles, trees, bins or shop materials, restricting the available space and making them unusable. To complete the abuse list, cars often park on pavements.

To bypass inadequate width or obstructions, people find themselves obliged to step off the pavement onto the street between parked cars and into the danger of passing traffic. That causes distressing inconvenience, anxiety and risk to life for the elderly, for people with defective vision and for those pushing wheelchairs or prams.

Bad pavements are a hidden form of abuse, particularly with regard to vulnerable persons, and are likely to become a source of serious insurance and compensation claims in the near future.

Surely, there are regulations regarding the construction of public pavements aimed at making them safe, unobstructed, uninterrupted, adequately wide, smooth-surfaced and having only gentle gradients (not steps or steep slopes) along their course. If Malta’s regulations exist and are outdated or inadequate, they must be urgently revised and then enforced.

No one seems to know who is responsible for pavements in this country. Repeated appeals to make these essential town structures fit for purpose have been totally ignored or shifted from local council to ministry and back or passed from department to department, to be invariably and irresponsibly ignored, ending up in unreachable and forgotten archives.

I wonder how many more years will have to pass and how many more people have to be injured before someone listens, understands and remedies the disgraceful state of abandonment of the pavements in Malta and Gozo?

The walking public, including tourists, expect much better in 2021 and beyond.

John Pace – Victoria

Attack on Marsascala

People enjoying themselves in Marsascala where a marina is being proposed. Photo: Brian Decelis

It is an undeniable principle everywhere that ‘where yachts, boats and ships move in, then swimmers, citizens and their families are automatically moved out’. I have written this before with regards to Msida Creek, St Paul’s Bay,  Gżira  Creek and elsewhere.

But, it seems, the decision makers will simply never listen or learn.

If this latest announced attack on Marsascala goes ahead, then what can the citizens of this lovely village do? Nothing, other than wait for that little plastic card which in a matter of months some accompanied policeman will be knocking at their door with and use wisely the rights it brings with it.

The most shameful aspect of charades such as this is, of course, that the wishes of both citizens and their democratically elected local councils are simply steamrollered over. By the way, many residents of Marsascala already know the names of the businessmen who stand to gain personally from this absurd project.

John Consiglio – Birkirkara

The elements

May I offer my heartfelt congratulations to Terry Bate for his pioneering research (July 30).

His chemical treatise provided great isomer-th to a lone pair of readers in Surrey, England.

Amazingly, on this very same day, large deposits of governmentium and administratium have been discovered in the foundations of Britain’s HS2 project – associated with known traces of technetium but rather worrying levels of scandium and boron.

Have any other readers noticed any of these connections?

Desmond Calnan – Surrey, England

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