A story in this week’s issue deals with the recurring problems the residents of St Julian’s, and of Paceville in particular, face every summer.

Hoards of Maltese youngsters descend on Paceville in summer for nocturnal gallivanting. The practice is, in a way, something of a teenager’s rite of passage but that is in no way an excuse for the treatment meted out to residents of the area and its environs.

Similarly, hundreds if not thousands of foreign language students also descend on the area every night, and many are actually housed there as well. And the problems accompanying a situation in which young people are far from home and bent on pursuing the opposite sex and alcohol fuelled nights out far from watchful eyes have been unaddressed for far too long.

One recalls plans announced back in 2007 for more controls on the language learning tourism sector, which accounts for some 13 per cent of Malta’s total tourism market – 13 per cent that many times has quite an adverse effect on the remaining 87 per cent of Malta’s tourists.

Back then, plans had been afoot to control such rowdiness and its effect on the more traditional tourists, who often share accommodation establishments with students.

The Malta Tourism Authority had been working, together with the private sector, on a new set of new rules to be implemented by summer 2008.

Among the raft of proposals was the stationing of security guards at hotels hosting both language students and the more traditional tourist, with the bill of such services being footed by the language schools patronising the establishments.

Such hotels were also to have been required to provide segregated dining areas and lodging quarters. Another measure on the table was a higher age requirement to be eligible for employment as a group leader responsible for students’ extracurricular activities.

One questions what happened to the lofty plans, and whether they were a mere knee jerk reaction to the particular problems that had cropped up in summer 2007.

Whatever the case, action in the area is urgently required – Paceville and St Julian’s are not strictly entertainment zones, they are also residential.