Last Sunday, it was my turn to report on Adrian Delia’s Sunday speech. He arrived more than half an hour late (because of the Remembrance Day celebrations) and made straight for the rostrum in the Marsa PN club.

In his opening sentence, he said he had not been more than 10 minutes in Marsa and people were already telling him about the law and order scene in the locality.

Obviously, this was understood by those present to refer to the migrant influx in the locality and the lack of police presence. Those present reacted favourably to these remarks.

After he finished his speech, Dr Delia walked to the police station and, true to form, found it locked. He even put up photos on his Facebook page showing him ringing the station’s bell. Some even understood this to be the new way of the PN leader, an occasion to make a political point.

So great was my amazement when the official PN press release did not mention this mini-event at all, nor did the other newspapers.

I can only deduce that Dr Delia’s minders, those who plucked him from relative anonymity to head Malta’s second political party, must have struck off any reference to Marsa’s plight out of a perhaps misplaced concern he could be sounding like a racist and/or a rabble-rouser. If that was the case, I hold that Dr Delia is wrong to let them dictate to him what to say and what not to say.

In his speech on Sunday, Dr Delia spoke not just about the situation at Marsa but also at Hamrun, Paceville, Pembroke and other localities.

I do not know about these other localities but in recent months I have been spending far more time in Hamrun, my birthplace, than I had been over the past years, mostly consisting of looking around for a place to park.

There can be no doubt about it: the face of Hamrun has changed completely over the past years. I speak mainly about that area between the police station and the Boy Scouts place. After a certain time, let’s say 7pm, you do not see any Maltese walking by, only coloured migrants.

Many live further away – there is not, in Hamrun that concentration of migrants as one for instance finds in Marsa. But the streets are theirs.

Nevertheless, I for one do not feel threatened, although there are many Maltese and Hamrunizi who do. Nor do the migrants make a nuisance of themselves, at least in my experience. The only exception happened some weeks ago when a group of migrants, making a lot of noise, climbed the trees at the ungodly hour of 5.30am, cut off some boughs and made off with them.

The majority are kind and considerate and respect others, which I cannot say holds true for some exceptions. But the overall impression is that a huge change has come over the locality.

The reason for this change is the availability of cheap houses, usually rented out at prices the migrants can afford. I have not heard of cases of overcrowding but recently in Marsa, there were some cases of massive overcrowding. I do not know if there are laws in this regard but there should be and landlords should be held accountable.

Seeing them walk by, most seem tired and sad: they must be working all hours and sending the bulk of their savings back to their families. That would also account for the inordinate time they used to spend in the phone box in the square (I believe it is not working now) and their ears glued to the mobile phone as they pass by, speaking in a strange language.

I would not say they have integrated, even though they wear western clothes (yes, even their women, more and more) but those who have families here are better integrated due to the fact that their children go to Maltese schools.

I cannot speak about places like St Paul’s Bay or Bugibba, nor of Marsa itself. It would seem most migrants, especially those coming from a Muslim background, cannot handle drink – which is where things get sticky with fighting, and so on. That is why we have so many cases in court involving migrants.

But these changed circumstances lead to political speech, with varying results.

Some time ago, the mayor of Hamrun put up a post on Facebook referring to something that happened in front of the Marsa church and said we can’t go on like this. He had a huge favourable response. (A migrant was said to have entered the church during a funeral and shouted Allahu Akbar; then it transpired he was drunk but he had helped at the funeral)

On 12 October, Claudio Grech, who represents both Marsa and Hamrun in the first district, put up a post in which he said we cannot go on like this. He added that he would be submitting seven proposals based on five basic principles including the basic right of every human being, to help the communities of Marsa and Hamrun rather than leaving them on their own, reducing the ghettoes that have sprouted in Marsa, Hamrun, and elsewhere.

I have not been able to find the seven proposals nor any reference to them.

I think Adrian Delia was right to bring up and highlight the situation at Marsa in his speech on Sunday and whoever was responsible for eliminating that reference was wrong, very wrong. We cannot move on by sweeping problems under carpets.

We need to speak about the real life situations of our people without succumbing to hate speech or racist tones. There are things that can be done and which must be done.

Meanwhile Dr Delia’s trip to the police station served to underline the empty words in the government’s earlier statement that law and order in Marsa was about to be strengthened.

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