A pressing issue on the Maltese Islands is the environment. Not just the countryside but also the urban environment. The real small dimensions of the islands coupled with the illusion of increased smallness created by the speed of motorised vehicles, give rise to real and psychological pressures. The issue thus grows into a double challenge for the physical and the psychological well-being of the population.

A vibrant construction industry might enrich the psychological well-being of the few, but the bill is footed by the many.

It seems to me that the Government’s vision for this sector is somewhat blurred. At least for a Government which claims to be left-of-centre, or centre-left.

The budding Malta Development Association has told the public that there are at least 400 developers – or building contractors to be more precise – operating on the Maltese Islands. The Association wants to regulate the industry to keep the cowboys at bay. The idea of imposing order on the Wild West is obviously welcome. The trouble is the number of building contractors – four hundred of them, on 316 square kilometres of land.

The problems are obvious, but I am not sure they are being adequately discussed at a public level.

The first question which comes to mind is whether it is sustainable to have 400 contractors for such a small territory. Is the MDA suggesting a numerus clausus or simply stricter regulations?

A numerus clausus – that is, a capping on the number of contractors – would seem to make sense. Unfortunately, in this case, Malta cannot reap the benefits of EU membership. Given the 100km of sea which separate us from the closest EU State (and then it’s its southernmost tip), it is impossible for Maltese contractors to bid and find clients elsewhere in the EU.

The four hundred contractors have no other choice but to compete for this very small market.

To my understanding, the situation gives rise to two logical and alternative consequences. One, more virgin land will be built up. Two, more existing buildings will be demolished to be replaced by high-rise blocks. In both scenarios, the charm of the Island is lost and the stress and strain on infrastructure is magnified to the nth degree.

Unless the State intervenes to dissuade the majority of those 400 contractors from continuing their business and to persuade them to take up some other enterprise, those are the only two possible alternatives. Build up the countryside, and demolish and change forever the urban landscape.

It cannot be otherwise. There are too many livelihoods which depend on those 400 contractors.

And thus the first question becomes fundamental: is the current situation sustainable?

It seems that it is not. There’s no other way one can understand the not-so-socialist statement made by the Governor of the Central Bank that social housing should not be a lifelong entitlement. To my mind, the subtext was that those people who now enjoy social housing should be encouraged to enter the commercial housing market, thereby stimulating demand.

This strategy is obviously based on the neoliberal assumption that people who live in social housing estates do so because they are lazy or because they choose to be poor. This is the most despicably liberal explanation of poverty. All the other explanations – ranging from mental health problems, to low levels of intelligence, to problematic upbringing, to sheer bad luck, etc – are simply sidestepped. The humane aspect of left-wing politics has been forsaken by the present, disgustingly neoliberal government  for which the vulnerable and the marginalised are no longer fellow men and women to be helped, but a nuisance, a social illness to be cured or a social problem to be engineered.

The wider, humane understanding of the human condition as not being directly willed by the individual is jettisoned in favour of the liberal myth of personal freedom and agency.

The Government’s push to attract more workers to Malta, thereby augmenting demand for real estate, raises the second question. Is the current situation – of projected continuous growth – sustainable? What happens if the expected growth does not materialise or there is a sudden slump?

What happens if an over-heated economy suddenly cools down and only a small percentage of foreign workers stay in Malta?

The Prime Minister seems to be invoking an old Sicilian legal institute which used to belong to the feudal nobility, the licentia populandi. This was the right to populate a region (in those times, a fief) and to build it up (privilegium aedificandi). One wonders whether this strategy is sustainable in the long term, or whether the benefits are only short-term.

There are other questions to ask. What will this two-pronged strategy (increase in construction and importation of population) lead to? What about social cohesion, the sense of shared identity, the sense of community? Will immigrants be asked to learn Maltese, or will a weird English lingua franca become the language of the land? Both scenarios violate the present Constitution – will the planned constitutional reform do away with the language clause, paving the way for Malta to adopt a pidgin English relegating us to the most abject form of former colony?

Lastly, does the Government have a mandate to carry out this radical change of Malta? Or is it the only solution the Government could come up with to keep the construction industry going?

In his extremely good book Reflections in a Canvas Bag, which the current Governor of the Central Bank published in 1989, the young Mario Vella argued that Malta needed industrialisation and economic diversification. What has happened to those ideas? Industrialisation and diversification have been put aside to sustain an unsustainable economic sector? Who will pay the price? Why should Malta’s face change so drastically? Who stands to gain and who stands to lose?

Has Anġlu Farrugia’s “fourth floor” anything to do with this?