From Dr L. Busuttil
Pardon me for having to waste more space in your paper in reply to Paul Aquilina’s contribution of 20 January entitled “Labour local councils’ Bubble and Squeak recipe”.
Even though it is only recently that I have started, or rather tried, to cook something, I am sure the results obtained by my leadership of Hamrun local council are much better than the results I attain in the kitchen, even though Mr Aquilina seems to imply I am quite familiar with the recipes from his old days on naval ships.
Hamrun, prior to 2001, was a Godforsaken land. Every single road was infested with potholes, and you could not walk on the pavements without the risk of breaking a leg. Under a Nationalist majority between 1998 and 2001 the order of the day could be summarised in a single word – lethargy, or in Mr Aquilina’s own terms, forced dieting!
In the first three years of my mayorship, between 2001 and 2004, my council succeeded in completing more infrastructural work than the two previous local councils put together. The first project my first council managed to complete in just one year was the Misrah 7 ta’ Gunju project, which had been pending for four years. In just a year, we consulted residents about the project, improved already existing plans and completed the work, turning the area from a war zone into one of the most beautiful parts of Hamrun.
Another project that a Nationalist-led Hamrun local council was scared to start was the underground parking project in the old market area. This project consists of a multi-storey underground car park, a play area at street level and new local council offices, since my council pays thousands of Maltese liri in rent every year for an inadequate building. After eight years awaiting the Mepa permit, this project is set to start later on this year, giving the Hamrun citizens and the local commercial community what they deserve!
Apart from these two big projects, 80 per cent of all residential roads, including St Joseph High Road, were given new pavements and resurfaced. In addition, we also invested in a series of rainwater culverts, solving huge problems for residents.
Apart from investing in the infrastructure, we invested in education and social issues. A new Lm10,000 library has been opened and is fully functional. We also organised courses for sixth year students who wanted to refresh their studies before sitting the Junior Lyceum exams, not to mention the innumerable computer courses organised by the council.
Last but not least, my council is the first local council to have sponsored local boys who love football to enrol in the Hamrun Spartans Nursery by paying the fee due to the club for all of them. The government later copied this initiative when it introduced a tax rebate for those tax payers who enrolled their children in a nursery.
Notwithstanding all this, Mr Aquilina chose to comment on some financial issues. Kindly allow me to answer his allegations one by one. Mr Aquilina seems scandalised by the fact that my council collaborates with the local bands. I am afraid he is not correct in saying that my council donated money to local bands. All my council did was organise free events for all the public together with the local band clubs.
Mr Aquilina admits he has already criticised me for this initiative in another newspaper. At last he is now admitting that he is the author of a fortnightly page on local councils in the weekly Il-Mument! I am sure the local band clubs will appreciate me sending the articles Mr Aquilina wrote criticising this initiative and will be happy to know that the Nationalist Party is against helping band clubs and organising events with them in their area!
As regards the childish comment about the beaches we have in Hamrun, Mr Aquilina already knows that all this refers to an accounting error that began appearing as far back as 1999 under a Nationalist-led council. No one, not even the Nationalist councillors since 1999, were aware of this accounting error. The money referred to erroneously under the heading “beach cleaning” had to be put under the heading “security services”, that is to say CCTV costs. The figures went down after my council decided to withdraw all CCTV cameras.
Mr Aquilina also has the cheek to imply that my council has ‘taxed’ – as he calls it – people through wardens’ contraventions by the sum of Lm329,996 in two years. That might seem a lot, but first let me say that fines are not taxes. A tax is something you cannot run away from, like death. A fine, on the other hand, is something you can avoid. Fines in Hamrun are not only given by wardens but also by the police force, ADT inspectors and education inspectors. However, if Mr Aquilina considers that the amount he mentioned is too much, what about St Julian’s? In just one year, St Julian’s “taxed”, as Mr Aquilina implies, double the amount mentioned for two years in Hamrun. An interesting fact is that in St Joseph High Road alone we counted 4,000,000 vehicles transiting each year!
Mr Aquilina’s contribution last week was supposed to be an answer to what I had written the previous week. However, he failed to comment on anything I had written, from which I assume that his silence means he agrees with my arguments.
Mr Aquilina always declares that people have the right to know this and to know that. Yes, I agree, people do have the right to know where all the money to build the Mater Dei went, or why each and every project carried out by the Government has cost much more than the original
estimate!
And, by the way, I am legal advisor to four local councils, not six. Do you not know how to count, Mr Aquilina? Rather than bubbling and squeaking about someone’s hard-earned profession and implying some kind of favouritism, I challenge Mr Aquilina to publish a comprehensive list detailing, council by council, who each individual council engages as a legal advisor. I think this would be very interesting and maybe then we will talk about favouritism, which the PN has been mastering for the last 20 years!
Luciano Busuttil
Hamrun mayor