Paceville businessmen are up-in-arms against the police for enforcing a law that lays down that no music can be played after 4am. They are saying that this is pushing people away from Paceville, driving them in “underground” parties that finish well after the Paceville deadline.

This situation, they say, has been going on since April, and over the past four months the establishment owners say they have lost lots of money. Some said they even had to dismiss a few of their part-time workers as their earnings have dropped considerably. They say that people move out of Paceville before 4am. This means that the “night” finishes early in Paceville.

What the police are doing is their job – that of enforcing a law, and nobody can blame them for doing so, not even the establishment owners. The law has been there for a number of years, but it was rarely, if ever, put in effect. Police presence in Paceville, especially during the weekends, is always heavy, but for a long time they closed an eye to the situation, which saw establishments remaining open, music and all, till 6am and beyond.

The situation has now changed, and the businessmen are feeling the pinch. With the police doing their duty, their clients are leaving Paceville to go and entertain themselves in what are known as private – or underground – parties. These are either held in private residences, or else in the open, considering the benevolent Maltese weather during the summer and shoulder months.

The issues at stake are two. The first concerns the law itself and whether the 4am deadline should be extended beyond the current 4am deadline. The second is that whereas the Paceville area is more or less “controlled” by the police presence, the so-called “underground” parties are not.

If the police are enforcing the 4am deadline in a bid to control abuse, in whatever form it comes, then the risk is that such a move has opened the way for more abuse since it is much easier to exercise control in a limited zone than to do so when the people are dispersed in different areas.

The dilemma here is great – on the one hand, if the 4am deadline is to be extended as the businessmen seem to be suggesting, then the government could be faced by the wrath of the residents in Paceville and the surrounding areas; on the other hand, if the 4am deadline continues to be enforced, people will continue to move out of Paceville and it will be the establishment owners who will complain, as they are already doing.

Still, the owners themselves are still to come up with a coordinated effort to push the authorities into at least debating the issue. While, individually, establishment owners complain about a drop in business, collectively they have done little to expose the problem. The first thing they should do to protect their interests is to get together, come up with a common stand and go to the authorities with their suggestions. It is only by starting the debate that they could get somewhere.

The government would do well to at least listen to what is being said. While the enforcing of the law is not in any way being questioned, at the same time it must be realised that young people are leaving a “controlled” zone to continue entertaining themselves in areas where there is no police presence, and this encourages abuse.

Unfortunately, it often takes an incident to open the authorities’ eyes to what is taking place. Let us hope that this time they do so before it happens.