Do you remember when rush hour traffic literally lasted for an hour and not all day? I do. As summer used to roll up, every childless commuter in the country would heave a secret sigh of relief. I still sigh now as I wait in traffic at 10 in the morning when people are meant to be at their 9 to 5 jobs, but it’s definitely not in relief. I look around and all I see are people. The roads are crowded with cars; the beaches are overflowing with human beings.
For a few long months after COVID, when we were unleashed and sent into the world again, I thought that I was imagining the massive surge in population. I honestly thought I had been inside for so long that I’d just forgotten how many people were piled onto this rock but it turns out that I was wrong.
According to national statistics, our population now stands at 563,443, with a record 42,000 people moving here in 2023. It’s honestly overwhelming if you really stop and think about it. I’m all for immigration but, surely, there needs to be the space and the framework to support it.
I was thinking this yesterday as my kitchen light started to flash like a Christmas tree. We have lost power four times (that I know about) over the past two days. It’s bad enough during the day but it’s been intolerable at night. But what were we expecting? We keep building towers higher, yet, our base infrastructure has remained the same. If our system was originally designed to give electricity to 10 households per road, did we honestly think that it was going to magically manage to withstand the strain of powering 50 households instead? And the electricity is just the beginning.
How can anyone be happy when they sleep drenched in sweat only to wake up and join endless traffic?- Anna Marie Galea
How are 563,443 humans going to use the same water and drainage setups meant for half that amount of people? Sooner or later, even that will need to be addressed by our authorities. Looking back, it seems grossly ironic that the party in power would make a song and dance every time 100 refugees were saved from death and starvation and then open the doors to literally everyone without having a plan in place for what would happen once the land reached maximum capacity. This is what happens when you’re greedy: you always end up paying for it in the end.
The truth is that if the government spent less time trying to put out the fires they caused, defending awful allegations, and being less petty in general, there would be a lot more time to tackle the actual issues that the country is collapsing under. So much time has been wasted playing ‘he said, she said’ and it distracts from the real, everyday issues impacting our quality of life.
How can anyone be happy when they sleep drenched in sweat only to wake up and join endless traffic?
We are paying the consequences for someone else’s lack of foresight. Remember that the next time you have to throw out all the contents of your freezer, replace an expensive appliance, or get stuck in a labyrinth of roadworks. This is the Malta you wanted.