Not so outrageous!

I cannot help but respond to the article by Guy Mahoney. Apart from him many expressed their opinion about the teacher being fined for doing 'his duty'. Well let me make some comments. As a tourist guide, I look at the situation from a different angle. It seems to me that everyone is missing the real issue here, which is that the teacher was leading a group of foreign students in the middle of their summer holiday.

It was not an ordinary outing for local schoolchildren during their scholastic year, which would have been let go unnoticed by the inspectors of the MTA enforcement board, who, I might add, are only doing their job, and a good one.

Mr Mahoney is implying that the tourist guides have the monopoly on guiding and lecturing around the historical monuments of this island, and are pressuring the government to protect them. Isn't this the case of other professions as well?

Mr Mahoney is forgetting that one cannot practise medicine or teach without the appropriate warrant. The same applies to architects and civil engineers, notaries and lawyers, even public transport drivers.

So why is it a surprise that the tourist guides want to protect their profession as well? Does being a teacher automatically mean that he/she is qualified to lecture about all monuments around Malta? For many years now the guides have been putting up with "guides", played by minivan drivers, couriers, animators and English school group leaders who only bring on a bad name to our profession.

These are the "guides" who call our girna "igloo" or Valletta's fortifications "fartifications". Why is it that every time something bad happens the guides are put in a bad light but when a good thing is happening, like guides giving free guided tours to schoolchildren or the public, this goes by unnoticed, despite the fact that the press has been informed?

No Mr Mahoney, if guiding were so simple as you imply it to be we would not have to go through many intensive lectures and pass the examination, and the government would issue the licence to anybody who feels is competent enough to guide or lecture on Maltese history.

But that is not the case, guiding is a profession which I take very seriously and I will fight for my rights and livelihood.

I suggest that before commenting on any issue one should gather all the facts and only then pass judgment, rather than blowing things out of proportion, as was done in this case.