I have come to the conclusion, albeit not a strictly logical one, that rather than the Switzerland of the Med, Malta is in fact the Treasure Island of the Med. It seems that those of us worrying about the exploding national debt must be suffering from the illusion that the government is not in control of its finances. Why have I reached this conclusion? Well, would a government strapped for cash propose any of the following?
Transport: €57 million and rising
Having already given away almost €5 million to the owners of 131 low-floor buses, the government is now proposing to buy them back at an additional cost of e15.5 million, as well as dishing out a further €37 million for 377 old crocks, some of which may be museum pieces. Incidentally, there was an interesting piece in the London Evening Standard of 25 January regarding the possibility that bendy buses, as they call two buses stuck together with a flexible, articulated joint, might yet end up in Malta.
The article states that if transport operator Arriva is successful in securing a contract to provide bus services in Malta, then 60 out of its 160 extremely unpopular bendy buses currently in operation on London roads, could be making their way out to the holiday island. The remainder of the bendy buses are reportedly due to be re-deployed to others cities across the UK where Arriva is in operation.
Bendy buses first hit the streets of London back in 2000 when they replaced the popular Routemaster, the bus with a platform at the back that you could jump on if you made it in time. The elongated bus has not proved to be to everyone’s liking, with passengers and officials alike voicing their dislike for it. In fact, London mayor Boris Johnson has promised that a revamped version of the classic open-platform Routemaster will make a welcome return to the city, ousting the controversial bendy bus.
The Arriva bus, and I quote what passengers tell you in the UK, also seems to be fire-prone. They are also nearly 20 feet long and all the doors on one side open like a train, thus encouraging many to take free rides. In fact, one of the reasons why they have already been banned from at least three routes (apart from their unwieldy length) and are now on the way out is that they encourage fare-dodging. Passengers ought to have a ball here with such buses. If my memory serves me right, Maltese bus drivers won the world cup when it came to fiddling the ticketing machines; they learnt the trick earlier than anybody else.
The new Parliament: e80 million and rising
The estimate – which I take it does not include the fee paid to Piano this time around, nor the fee paid for the time before that, nor the cost of an earlier competition to design a fitting Opera House – is set at around e80 million. Now since that figure does not include all the expense that will be incurred re-routing the Valletta traffic, and since all projects under this government have overrun extensively anyway, one needs to probably double it to have a realistic estimate.
Church schools: e7.5 million and rising
We now read that the taxpayer is to subsidise extensions to Church schools. The taxpayer already pays the salaries of teachers in Church schools, of course.
The Drydocks e50 million and rising
On the plea that it would ease the sale of Malta Drydocks, the government paid out over e50 million in terminal benefits not to mention recurrent charges on social security and the foregoing of social security contributions. All this effort has resulted in Malta being offered, and the government accepting, a measly e6 million for the Drydocks proper and a share in the superyachts repair facility. The apparently successful bidder may very well be an Italian company that owns two small shipyards and employs around 70 full time employees.
Water, utilities known and rising
A letter to an English language paper last week pointed out that the new Gasco depot for Liquefied Petroleum Gas was to be sited in a disused quarry in ix-Xoqqiet, Birzebbuga. The writer claimed that 140,000 cubic metres of rainwater enter this quarry on an annual basis and drain into the ground to replenish the island’s underground water supply. Once the depot has been relocated to the quarry it is proposed that these 140,000 cubic metres of rainwater will be dumped directly into the sea and lost.
Former Water Services Chairman Tancred Tabone warned in an interview last week that Malta will run out of water in five years’ time. A hydrologist of my acquaintance has already told me that in the near future wealth in Malta will be measured according to one’s ability to buy clean drinking water. And yet, for years the water table has been the prey of numerous illegal boreholes while a drinks company unashamedly stated that it did not pay for its underground water extraction and that if it were made to pay, it would discharge workers.
What else is rising?
Well there is of course the extension to the power station with its looming by-problems, there is an already problematic health reform, there is a structural deficit that is on the increase, there is a growing elderly population, there are ministries with growing armies of helpers and advisers who are either not proffering good advice or work for people who do not know good advice when they see it, there is a mushrooming of quangos, authorities, bodies, and other unaccountable structures and, above all, there is growing discontent.
When, and if, the LP come into power, and they do the sensible thing by carrying out an independent audit of the previous government, I wonder what they will find still lying at the bottom of the treasure chest.