The law courts often come in for criticism for lack of decisive action, however one must praise the inquiring magistrate in the Balluta sewage leak inquiry.

Magistrate Jacqueline Padovani was appointed as inquiring magistrate in a bid to establish what went wrong and caused the sewage leak into the bay. We will not go into the merits of the case as it and other related ones are still sub judice, but we will go into the merits of the stand the magistrate took.

There was a situation, to quote Magistrate Padovani “of high peril”. From the word go, the magistrate would not allow a long-drawn-out inquiry and constantly henpecked the officials involved to get the issue sorted out. She pushed for interim measures to alleviate the problem and she also made sure that all parties were working on a long-term solution. At times she was stern with those involved and made sure they got their act together. The magistrate’s reasoning was that Balluta was a health hazard waiting to happen and she was absolutely correct with that assumption. She would not let the involved parties bicker and procrastinate and at one point warned them that throughout the inquiry she would not “allow a day to go by without something being done” to sort out the mess.

If only we had more people as decisive in other areas of government, local government and various other departments.

Unfortunately, in Malta we do not have many people who are ready to act and assume responsibility for those actions whether good, bad or indifferent. We will not mention any names as it is also practice for people in this country to assume that they are being praised with ulterior motives.

Malta’s private sector has pushed forward and broken out of the cotton wool cocoon that used to characterise the way we did business. With competitiveness being what it is, the private sector has become as decisive as any other companies you might find in Europe and the United States. The private sector is built on decisive decision-making, everyone knowing their responsibilities and what is expected of them.

We are beginning to see that mentality creeping into the civil service, but more is needed. We need people to take pride in their jobs and especially for those who are higher up to motivate and if needs be, cajole their employees to do a better job. A case in point, a person went to the Public Transport Authority to pay some fines, they were told that this was not possible and that they had to go to the Licensing and Testing.

Once there, staff told him that it was not possible to do so and sent him to the Police General Headquarters. Luckily for him, there was an off-duty policeman who told him that he should go to the council as the police would only accept payment for tickets issued by PCs and not wardens. Should we really be having such idiotic behaviour in government departments? It undoes all the good work that is carried out by, for example Magistrate Padovani in the sewage leak case. Faith in administrative bodies is not an easy thing to boost. But at the same time, it is very easy to lose it.