What is wrong with Malta? Here goes. This is my non-exhaustive list of what I and many of my acquaintances feel has gone wrong.
Malta is dirty, filthy and unhygienic. Rubbish bags line our streets all day. Public beaches are always full of cigarette butts. Dogs, cats and other animals are often taken to the beach by their owners and left to run and dirty. All rubbish bins overflow. Too many abandoned houses are left to rot with squatters and flaked paintwork and broken windows.
Malta lacks maintenance. Most pavements are broken and are dangerous for the old, infirm or disabled.
Malta has too many construction sites. Permits are granted without abiding by the rules.
Developers or speculators, members of the Labour inner core or just pure financiers of the party get all the permits they want and just build shoddy ugly buildings taking ages to finish them and leaving the neighbourhood to suffer trucks, cranes, noise, dirty sidewalks and facades and dust, dust and dust.
Malta has built too many roads that attract too many cars. Roadworks start without forewarning and last forever to the desperation of drivers, residents and visitors. MHRA president Tony Zahra wrote a striking criticism of the ministry of transport that seems keen to destroy our tourists’ pleasure.
It is striking coming from the MHRA because, as I recall, it was their policy to continue to increase the number of tourists for ever. The theory they seem to apply is that tourists coming to Malta will only come once. Europe alone has over 400 million citizens and if each year two million of these come to Malta it will take at least 200 years for all of them or their children or grandchildren to come at least once.
Malta is no longer pleasant for the Maltese. We hide away from the hordes of youngsters from all over the world roaming our streets without shirts or in bikini tops, riding e-scooters on pavements and dropping them off everywhere. They roam our streets at night shouting as they return home from Paceville or Valletta (the new Paceville) after drinking cheap booze.
We also have the other group of groupies who man the gambling and fintech industries thinking they are welcome because they are high earners. They leave nothing to Malta except their arrogance and failure to understand our culture.
Malta has no enforcement of its own laws. Yes, Malta has laws to cover all circumstances of our life and Maltese in the past abided more or less by them. Today, no policemen patrol the promenades stopping people walking or running without shirts or in bikinis nor do they stop and fine people riding e-scooters on pavements.
Malta is no longer pleasant for the Maltese- John Vassallo
No one fines people leaving their rubbish out on the wrong days and at wrong times. Rarely are tax avoiders fined. No one controls building sites having workmen without a contract or work permit, without helmets or who hang on scaffoldings without safety harnesses or hard-nosed boots. No one does anything when people bring dogs to beaches. No one controls overspeeding or the use of mobile phones in cars or tailgating.
No one controls the kitchens in Valletta restaurants with those black holes where meals are prepared by I wonder who, in whatever level of cleanliness.
Finally, who controls our politicians when they sell out the national treasures like the power station, the hospitals, Żonqor and Cospicua dock to the AUM, or the Montenegro wind farm deal, or the ITS sale to the Debono group, or the Portelli outrages of permits on ODZ or the Zammit Tabona ferry permits or the change of conditions at Tigné? Who controls our environment in places like Comino? Who controls the hunters during the illegal but sanctioned hunting seasons?
Malta has an unfair tax system that discriminates against the Maltese. We are too servile and give people interested to live in Malta special tax rates that are close to zero. Maltese citizens have to pay 25 per cent plus on all their world income. The same servile and stupid tax regime applies to foreign-owned companies that operate or pretend to operate from Malta. They pay a maximum five per cent of their world profits here while Maltese companies competing with them pay 35 per cent.
Malta’s institutions, such as the police and the attorney general, do not act like truly independent institutions. No action was taken by the Chamber of Adocates when two lawyers were acquitted of bribery on a technicality. The Chamber of Architects also seems toothless when breaches of building regulations, leading to houses collapsing, take place.
The cause of this disaster are wrong policies. The list is endless. Mass tourism, a policy of impunity of politicians under the new Labour government, an economy based on passport sales and cheap imported labour, a Planning Authority giving too many permits, a lack of environmental inspections and enforcement of existing rules, the filling of government boards with political buddies and persons of trust and ignoring the local populations of tourist centres like Valletta, St Paul\s Bay, Comino, Sliema St Julian’s, Marsascala and Gozo.
These policies have had a catastrophic effect on the Maltese population. The only viable solution is a change of policy or a change of policymakers.
John Vassallo is a former ambassador to the EU.