Ever since local councils were set up in the early 1990s, there have been several complaints made by residents of certain areas who believed that they should have been granted the right to form their own council too.

Sixty-seven local councils were set up in the first formation, and these later grew to 68 when Mtarfa was also given its council. Residents of other areas have been calling for their own council, or at least to have representation on the council of their locality, for quite some time. Some of them have received the support of MPs who contest the election in the district where the locality is situated.

Last week, the government announced that several of these areas will, as from this year, have the right to elect their own committees which will act as a liaison between these zones and the council.

Sixteen areas have been identified and, according to parliamentary secretary Chris Said, who is responsible for local councils, these are areas which are either too distant from the centre or else have special needs.

The first question that comes to mind is whether there is a need for this further division. Localities in Malta and Gozo are already very small, with Birkirkara being the largest town with some 22,000 residents. Many other localities have fewer than 5,000 residents, while some others, particularly in Gozo, have less than 1,000.

Residents of the areas earmarked to have their own mini-council have obviously expressed their satisfaction that they will now have a bigger voice. But should these residents be privileged over others who live in different areas? Are we creating a two-tier system that discriminates between one resident and another? This is what it looks like.

Whereas, in other countries, there is an effort for communities and municipalities to merge to cut down on resources and reduce waste, we are going in the opposite direction by creating councils within councils.

Secondly, the reform of the local council as announced by the government intends to reduce the number of times the Maltese and Gozitans go to the polls. Until now, at least one third of Malta goes to vote once a year, and we all know how hot it gets (politically) each time an election is to be held.

With the reform, it was planned to have years during which no election is to be held. This year was going to be one of them, and this was a step in the right direction. But now, after all, we will have elections this year – for these mini-councils. It is quite contradictory, on the one hand, to carry out a reform to reduce elections, and then invent something else to have yet more elections which, it must be remembered, also come at a cost to the taxpayer.

Thirdly, with political parties often finding it hard to find enough candidates to contest on their behalf in some localities, it will not be a surprise that it will be difficult to find at least five people to form these mini-councils. With five members to fill the seats on these mini-councils, these will be as big as some of the local councils of the locality in question.

Fourthly, the parliamentary secretary is still to explain how the 16 areas were identified. While, with some stretch of the imagination, there are zones which can be described as having special needs – although even this is arguable – there are others which are more or less made up of two or three roads.

On what grounds were these areas identified? What special needs do these areas have? And why were bigger zones such as Qawra, Bugibba, Manikata and Qajjenza left out? Why don’t the residents of these areas deserve their own mini-council if others are to have theirs?

It seems that this decision was taken haphazardly and that it will create more harm than good.