Smoking near playground 

No sooner had we settled down for dinner next to the playground in Marsascala on Sunday night (across the road from the bus terminus) than a group of four youngish men sat down on a table next to us. With beers in one hand (no crisps in sight) and a cigarette in the other, they puffed away to their heart’s content.

They were in breach of at least two bans: that for smoking in the vicinity of children’s equipment (in force since December 2012) and the current pandemic mitigation measures of no drinks without food. Besides spoiling our evening with their second-hand smoke, their action points to a serious lack of enforcement, especially on the night that the feast of St Anne was being celebrated (with clear breach of multiple pandemic measures by the crowds that gathered along the promenade). To make matters worse, a call I made to the Marsascala police station with a promise of a visit “shortly” did not materialise after about two hours or so that we were having dinner.

Dan il-pajjiż ma nfiequ qatt. (With all the good intentions in the world, it is useless to legislate unless there is proper enforcement.)

Brian Decelis – Marsascala

Unfinished Malta

 

It is now almost 35 years since I worked at a local manufacturing company for a short stint at the San Ġwann Industrial Park. One day, after aluminium contractors had installed extensive partitioning, I noticed that all the pencil fabrication marks were not rubbed off and stuck out like the idiomatic sore thumb.

Along came an English expatriate colleague who, when I pointed out the indiscretion, quipped that “it is unfinished like everything else in this country”.

The gentleman was a most affable person, with a mellifluous voice, as I fondly recall, and a genuine lover of Malta and the Maltese. His comment was certainly neither spiteful nor malicious.

Thirty-five years on, wherever I go around Malta observing so many unfinished places, his words keep coming back to mind like an eternal flashback – almost haunting me. I feel fortunate to have travelled overseas extensively for business and pleasure and have always marvelled at the perfect upkeep of the countryside for hundreds of kilometres on end.

Like the many Maltese who go abroad, I keep asking myself why can’t we be like that? If environmental harmony is possible in such large counties, why should it be a problem in tiny Malta? Maybe I have the wrong perception as I live in the south but the problem appears to be more acute in this part of the island. 

Just a few examples. When the Ħal Far road was resurfaced some years back, a pedestrian pavement was incorporated but filled with soil and never finished. The weeds grow to a metre in winter. With the onset of summer, an army of workers are mobilised to remove them, only to grow again and the cycle is repeated. Simply pathetic. What does it take to do it up with some earth-coloured concrete?

The entrance to Ħas-Saptan is a dumpsite with the much-needed water reservoirs abandoned for years. The building of a beautiful rubble wall was started in Triq il-Ġebel, Birżebbuġa some four years ago but never completed. The incomplete end is now a dump. Similarly, the revamped car park at Wied il-Buni was long awaited and a splendid job has been done to the satisfaction and approval of the public. But, there again, the entrance is appalling.

It is  very fair to state that Infrastructure Malta has done an excellent job in restoring so many rural agricultural roads in quite a short time and it is now a joy to drive or ramble through them but the unfinished syndrome persists. The tarmac has been perfectly laid but rusted oil drums are still there.

Victor Pisani – Birżebbuġa

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