A metro for Malta
As a regular visitor to Malta and prior inhabitant, I am well aware of the traffic issues that Malta suffers and which will only get progressively worse unless an appropriate solution is found.
Having lived in several countries and large cities, I feel there is only one sustainable solution that will work in Malta. It is to have a national underground metro system.
It has a high initial expense but will pay for itself over the years and future proof Malta going forward.
William Torreggiani – Dublin, Ireland
Safe passage
The people of Swieqi have long been promised a decent and safe entrance/exit because the present situation on St Andrews Road has now become very dangerous for commuters, to say the least.
The only place left for such a junction is the abandoned plot of land between Triq it-Tiben and St Andrews Road, which, for many years, has been earmarked for the building of this junction. Over the years, building permits were refused on this land and should be refused now because if this land will be built up, it will be lost and the present and future generations will have to live with this dangerous situation forever.
Hopefully, our local council and members of parliament will do their utmost with Infrastructure Malta and the Planning Authority for the benefit of the 14,000 or so inhabitants of Swieqi.
Charles Attard – Swieqi
Significant message
One of the most beautiful things that can ever occur to us is when we have our conscience in place.
A saying the Holy Spirit taught me recently is the following: when I do my best I won’t have any regrets. Is this not a Spirit-filled concrete life savvy?
Fr Mario Attard OFM Cap – Marsa
PM should let us know
I’ve been watching Boris Johnson explaining what’s happening vis-à-vis COVID. Why isn’t hapless Robert Abela clarifying what’s going on?
Kevin Hodkin – Xagħra
Where is the fairness or balance?
Nick Debono must be living in some sort of heavy landlord-based cuckoo land to claim, in the last paragraph of his article “Striking a fair and just balance” (February 3), that “In this regard, the landlord’s rights have, finally, been given the fair and required remedy following a number of years of injustice”.
Where is the fairness?
In, as a result of court decisions, throwing upon the state (all of us as taxpayers) a repeatedly heavy onus of having to pay out big handouts to landlords who try to extract out of financially poor tenants what are being described as “market level” rentals? In forcing tenants to pay rents that are a very heavy percentage of their meagre incomes? In making tenants, especially old and often sick persons, live under constant threats of being thrown out into the streets?
All lawyers, developers, speculators, architects, property owners, and whatnot must simply get it into their heads that the right to own property gives nobody any right to wreck the lives of anyone else. Property ownership is no automatic right to playing a merciless god.
If the legislators, and the courts, want a way out of what they perceive to be a conundrum, this lies in having on the statute book legislation which does not allow any property owner any right to demand rents that are at a level which is higher than a certain percentage of a breadwinner’s basic and regular income (for example, not more than 25 per cent).
Consider the reasonableness of this when, for example, even the banks apply such rules of thumb with regard to required regular loan repayment rates from borrowers for house purchasing.
Why cannot our legislators and, to boot, even our courts, not see the urgency of having such a structure in place? Indeed, I am interested in knowing why our clever judges and magistrates have not yet found it expedient to include in their sentences such types of obligations and structures.
John Consiglio – Birkirkara
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