It was promised in November; then it was put off for the first week of December, and later to February. Now February has come to an end too, and the local council reform is still somewhere in the corridors of Castille.

Each time The Malta Independent makes an enquiry about the subject, it is told that the proposals for the reform will soon be taken at Cabinet level before they are made public. But Cabinet did not meet last Monday (a holiday for Carnival?) and another week has gone by.

Maybe this coming Monday will be la volta buona, as the Italians put it.

A lot of work has been put into the reform, with meetings held with all local councils and other interested parties in the second half of last year. Yet it seems that even the hardworking Chris Said, the parliamentary secretary responsible for the reform, has been caught up in the quagmires of government bureaucracy, and has not managed to keep the self-imposed deadline.

Why it has taken so long is anyone’s guess. But it is clear that the government has once again failed to stick to its own targets. If a local council reform, on which there is consensus, is taking so long to see the light of day, one wonders what will happen when other more complicated reforms come up on the agenda.

A lot has been said and written about the planned reform. It should not be a controversial issue. Both political parties represented in Parliament know that local councils have contributed to the development of the country and shifted certain burdens away from the government.

This decentralisation has enabled the government to concentrate on more important matters, while local councils became responsible for the day to day running of their own locality. It is now the time to fine-tune the mechanism, basing the reform on the experience gained in the last 15 years.

Whether all local councils have done their job well is open for the judgment of the residents. Some have literally transformed their locality, others simply carried out the minimum of their requirements while ignoring the rest. The problem is that in some localities mayors and councillors continue to be elected in spite of their inefficiency.

And this is why the reform is needed. Apart from looking into matters pertaining to the election of councillors – the term of office needs to be extended and mayors should not be allowed to stay on for more than two consecutive terms – the reform must make local councils more accountable from all aspects.

This has to be done from the financial point of view, but also in the ability of the council to first come up with a plan for the locality and, second, to implement it.

There are councils who have disappointed their residents too many times, and only try to do something when the election is approaching.

A number of them are even too lazy even when it comes to making use of facilities to promote their activities. For example, for the past six months The Malta Independent has offered the Local Government Department space on the Monday newspaper for local councils to use to tell their residents what events they are holding. All it takes is an email.

Yet, each week, there are only four or five, sometimes less, out of a total of 68 local councils who do so. And while there are local councils who are regular in their contributions, many others have never used the facility. Could it really be that they have done nothing at all? We would not be surprised.

The reform – hopefully it will go through all the stages, including Parliament, before the next elections scheduled for 6 June – should not be just a cosmetic change.