Unlike the many who have criticised the Brand Malta campaign, I agree with it. It brings to our homes the awareness that there should be about the importance of tourism to the economy, and the important role we all have as individuals in making the industry successful. Perhaps the authorities should also target the tourism operators individually, seeing there are those among them who shortsightedly fleece tourists and harm the industry on which they depend.

However, “charity begins at home” and I do not see how the government can expect me to do my best to make visitors feel welcome, when the government treats me so shoddily. How can I be expected to put in an extra effort to please foreigners, when foreigners are treated with the respect they deserve, while I am looked on as second class. I mean, I cannot quite accept the difference the government makes between what is due to me, as a taxpayer, and what is due to distinguished people who come to Malta.

I refer to the state of the roads in particular. In November, we had the Commonwealth summit here and the government bent over backwards to provide good roads where the distinguished heads of government were to pass. We who live here have also benefited, of course.

But the difference in treatment to the prime minister’s distinguished guests from overseas, and to his fellow countrymen, cannot be more stark. Roadwork has hardly been continued since the Commonwealth summit ended – and the patchwork that has been done since comes nowhere near, for satisfaction, what was provided to the overseas visitors.

Bad stretches of road have been done up well, but equally bad stretches on the same road have been left undone and we have to live with them. If an example is wanted, I would refer to the Rabat road. There are stretches on it just past the fork to Ta’ Qali when going up to Rabat which have been patched up, and equally bad stretches which have been left in their terrible state. The stretch between the fork I have mentioned and the roundabout which leads to Zebbug, or Rabat, or Mtarfa, is itself in a terrible state, and was left so.

If I, as a highly taxed motorist, and highly taxed taxpayer, feel neglected by the authorities who plunder my earnings, how can they expect me to make efforts to please visitors? The attitude the authorities provoke in me is, rather, one of indifference. And it irks me to see the Malta Transport Authority ignoring the justified complaints of motorists, though it is to motoring taxes that the authority owes its being.

C. GALEA,

Rabat.