Two years ago, when a so-called transformation strategy covering 2020-2025 was launched, the police force pledged “a more positive working environment” for its workforce. What prevails – admittedly, with three more years to go – are police stations in such a pitiful state they have been likened to a “horror house”.
That state of affairs can only make for a disillusioned and demotivated body of men and women, the bulk of whom go out of their way every single day to serve society the best they can against the odds. And this only in relation to the physical infrastructure of their workplace.
Imagine what they have to go through when the corps they are so loyal to is discredited by so many for going after the fry as the big fish and the long-tentacled octopus continue their feeding frenzy.
In his introduction to the strategy document, Police Commissioner Angelo Gafà had spoken of not wasting any time to embark on “some key initiatives”.
Concrete action, he had said, would be taken “so that, five years down the line, we will be a proud police organisation with high levels of public support”.
Judging by what the Malta Police Union has just declared, that remains a pipe dream.
“In the third year out of five of a strategy which leads to nowhere, except for policies which brought chaos throughout the whole department,” the union lamented, “we are still not seeing any plans for the police estate to receive a complete overhaul and our police stations really look as such and not a horror house.
Imagine our officers, spending 12 hours in this type of environment. The little motivation an officer might have left will vanish quickly”.
It has released photographs showing the state of the police stations in Msida, Valletta and St Julian’s. For the record, since the images were published, some works were undertaken in other stations but the union wants to ensure this was not merely a “cosmetic exercise in a quick reaction”.
That is, indeed, what the people, who depend on the police for their security and safety, also hope.
For, as Calum Steele, president of the European Confederation of Police, commented this May, police stations that are “akin to offices from the 1950s and 1960s” are not likely to guarantee the police service performing at its best.
All personnel should feel valued and cared for. They should be able to carry out their duties in an environment that safeguards their quality of life.
That is what the transformation strategy aimed for when it was unveiled in September 2020 but the situation on the ground is nowhere near that.
In a way, the police commissioner put his own neck on the block when he declared in the introduction that, having authored the project proposal himself, “there is full assurance and commitment that this strategy is set to be fully implemented within the next five years”.
Two precious years have been lost, certainly on the strategy’s objective eight, which aims to improve the quality of life of the members of the force.
The corps, according to the Malta Police Union, is experiencing “total demotivation”, officers are leaving and the remaining ones face mounting stress.
There is evidently still a lot more to do, both from an infrastructural and organisational aspect, to attain the lofty aim of the updated police mission statement: to provide a professional and trusted policing service to ensure safety and security in partnership with the community.