As has become customary on our islands, the last few weeks of last year were  dedicated to accommodate the culmination of charity raising endeavours. Never in my entire life have I witnessed anything like the zeal and dedication manifested by our very own  Head of State, to raise record breaking  sums of money  in order to replenish the now indispensable Community chest fund coffers.  

What motivated  and fired the enthusiasm of the President  and her hard working team is undoubtedly their continuous  encounters with a deluge of unfavourable or outright heartbreaking  human situations that could be alleviated, mitigated or simply resolved by the investment of  just the right amount of cash  at the right moment,  in the right way, by the right people.

So far so good.

Our entire nation should thank the President of the Republic, and all the others who take pains to appeal to the public's conscience and kind heart  to secure contributions for charities  which in turn attempt to  bridge the gap between what our nation supplies and what our nationals actually come to need.

What I find irritating is the fact, that simultaneously with and while this monumental effort is being made to raise the record three million and over,  to help the most vulnerable in our society, our economy is being lauded as going from strength to strength and  published figures indicate a substantial increase in government revenue.

The sad part is that notwithstanding the steady increase in government revenue, our national debt increased so much that as this newspaper reported 'The interest component of the public debt servicing costs for the period under review amounted to €210.6 million, an increase of €3.2 million over last year.'

This means that we paid in extra interest on the increase in national debt incurred by this government, a sum , almost equivalent to what the President raised  through so much work and effort.

Just imagine what Malta stood to gain had we capitalised on our prosperous year to cut down on the public debt! We would have saved the €3.2 million extra we had to fork out and saved more millions on our debt cut, which in turn we could have used as a government to spare our poor and needy from the harrowing experience of having to beg for charity.

As things stand, our economy has grown and stands to grow more, as tourism moves from strength to strength, thanks to our  capable tourism minister  who is aptly capitalising on Malta's top appeal in the Mediterranean at the moment.

Moreover the government's coffers  are being duly filled as we speak with the exorbitant fuel prices we are being charged in the light of current international crude scenario. And then there is the IIP scheme and the welfare fund which had to be created from the proceeds...

What I mean to say is that as our country's financial situation improves, we expect the life of the needy to improve proportionally. We expect more diligent spending of public money, more transparency, more accountability and proper internal auditing of government owned institutions ,departments and ministries. We expect our National Debt to make sense, and we expect total elimination of the need for our countrymen to be constrained to resort to charities in their time of need.

As we all know this can only happen if increased government revenue is accompanied by scrupulous disposal of public funds and elimination of corruption...

The first few days of the year have seen our country's name tarnished again as we heard our  present Justice and Culture Minister and a previous Nationalist Interior Minister, approve of Hibernians' attempt to put a convicted rapist on their football team.  I don't know how the story would have ended had Britian's own Justice Ministry (and our own poor PM)  not come to the rescue of  the Maltese Public left at the mercy of such flagrant immature incompetence.

One can only hope that this debacle is not just a taste of things to come in 2015. In the meantime, we heed the words  of  the PM and try to remain... steadily optimistic.