Traffic used to be jammed at
crucial hours of the morning in Hamrun’s High Street before the
wardens were set up. It still does, wardens and all.
Cars used to be triple-parked in
Testaferrata Street Msida in the morning rush hours before the
wardens’ time. It still gets clogged, as anyone can see.
It is true that the wardens have brought in a new culture of law
enforcement in some particular places, but just as a chain is as strong
as its weakest link, so law enforcement in Malta is as strong as its
weakest link. Which means that it is very very weak.
This, it would seem, is a national curse.
We do not have, as a people, enough sense of self-responsibility to be
able to self-police ourselves. This in turn means that we have to have
enforcement, and heaps of it.
Parking and road obstruction is just one of the most glaring examples.
The same goes for road manners, for speeding, for the current craze of
people jumping the lights and cutting in the other lane.
We see examples of uncivil behaviour on the roads all the time but
little or next to nothing is done to stop them.
More: we have created a new body of people which may have been a good
idea in principle, but which has concentrated its efforts almost
exclusively to monitoring parking places, with some unequal results, if
people’s complains are to be believed.
This, in turn, has resulted in an almost total disregard by policemen of
anybody who is not obeying the road rules, since policemen seem to have
come to think that from now onwards, any traffic problems are the
wardens’ problems.
We have not gained much, if we have gained at all.
And that’s just about traffic. What about the neglect and dirt on our
streets? We are a very dirty people: just look at the way we leave our
beaches after barbecues, just look at people throwing things out from
cars, just look at the way in which people discard their bulky refuse,
when they can get anything carted away from their houses for free.
In the past weeks, we have been giving increased prominence to
people’s complaints about various forms of threats to public health,
from drainage overflows to rat problems at the Pitkali market.
In answer to some of the criticism that has been made, government has
issued statistics claiming that the number of days when bathing is not
permitted is on the decrease.
This is true, but still does not completely answer the people’s
concern. Up to some years ago, for instance, people were less concerned
than they are now about the effects of long hours in the sun. Now they
are all concerned about this. Today people expect more from government
and what used to be acceptable some years ago is not acceptable today.
It is also true, however, that except for infrastructural problems,
which require long planning and implementation (and money) the main
culprit for the neglect we see around us all the time is the people.
As a person who used to love coming to Malta but who has declared this
is the last time he will be visiting, has said, Malta has all the
potential to be another Monte Carlo. Monte Carlo does not have the
physical beauty or the historical sights that Malta has, nor are its
buildings far better than ours. What it does have, however, is a sense
of security, and serious enforcement. No one dares drop paper in the
street, no one would think of leaving beer bottles lying around, no one
would imagine a rubbish bin vandalised, set on fire or put upside down.
It is government’s task to rise up to the expectations of the people:
people are clamouring for a better kind of environment. There is one
sure way to do this: more enforcement. Give the enforcement people the
tools they need to work. Remove the hindrances and the obstacles, the
various clashes between regulatory bodies. Give them tasks which are
more important than acting as parking ladies. And then measure them by
their success.
