In 2011, what need is there for a bread seller to sell bread inside the entrance to the capital city?

There are shops selling bread everywhere, and in most towns and villages convenience stores remain open till late. People who desire bread can get their fill from the shop down the street. As from next Sunday, pedestrian entry to Valletta will be prohibited due to the works on the demolition of City Gate. Pedestrians will be routed along a tunnel that leads to the Central Bank Annex and thence to Castille Square. One hopes the City Gate bread seller will now not set up shop at the entrance of the presumably congested tunnel. Or later on when the City Gate bridge is reopened for passengers along the narrowed bridge or even in the gap between the huge blocks of stone there will be.

This paper, and this writer, have no agenda against the bread seller, nor do they know who he is, but once City Gate is being so upgraded it is time to review all that has turned it into a souk. It always starts with the best of intentions. When the new City Gate was built in 1964 or thereabouts, cement and glass kiosks were included in the design. Then the cement ceiling that joined one kiosk to the next developed cracks and somehow kiosks were allowed in the area. As a result, most of the cement and glass kiosks are today underused.

In a court case reported by this paper’s sister Sunday paper some time ago, various details were revealed which show there is multiple ownership of kiosks. The court case in question made a whole series of allegations about sleaze, which would seem to confirm the impression formed by so many people who daily enter the city.

Up till some time ago, the kiosks were proliferating and expanding until they, together with taxis parked on the bridge and karozzini as well, clopping in and turning around and coming out in the face of incoming crowds. Then some sort of order was brought in, possibly because of the City Gate project and the taxis and karozzini disappeared from the bridge, and the kiosks were restricted to what seems to have been their original parameters. Nor do we see people setting up ad hoc kiosks, selling cheap shoes like an extension to the monti. At most all we now see is the old man with a chair and a radio selling tickets. Still, we must not compare to what was common in the past and rest on our laurels by self-congratulating ourselves that the situation is far better.

Once the old public transport system ends on 2 July, the buses will be removed from City Gate (the new buses will pick up passengers from along the Vjal Nelson area where the Sunday monti used to be held) and a general restoration and upgrading of the two arms of the outside of City Gate will be carried out. The old kiosks one finds on either side of City Gate will go and the area will be given an impressive upgrading.

Along the Vjal Nelson bastion, in between the posts where the new buses will be, there will be some kiosks. The application for these kiosks has been approved by Mepa and the design looks suitably lightweight. The contract to build these kiosks has also been adjudicated and one would think they are waiting for the paving to be completed before they are brought on site.

One hopes it will remain as it was on the designs presented to Mepa and that no advertising is allowed or aluminium or encroachments. One also hopes the rents are put up so as to dissuade the type of merchants that seem to have sprouted around City Gate. The area has been degraded for so long there must have been connivance to allow it to degenerate so much. The recent presence of police and Transport Malta enforcers has helped in no small manner to bring order into the area. But more, much more, needs to be done. Otherwise we will simply repeat the sorry history of the 1964-2011 story all over again: How to turn the entrance to your capital city into a Middle Eastern souk.