Dear Government, I beg your pardon but I have to tell you that your slip is showing especially regarding Gozo.

If privatising the Gozo General Hospital means we are having it so good, why did you not privatise Mater Dei?

Which wisecracker came up with the brilliant idea of building a new school in an already existing school? Agius de Soldanis School, which has so much proud history, will now be reduced to this state.

What did the uprooting of trees at the old entrance of the hospital serve? It did not make the road any wider and a strip is still there behind which cars park. What it did was denude the area similar to what happened in other places like Nadur Square?

Will not an underground metro system better serve Gozo than a two-lane tunnel? It will make life much easier for Gozitan workers in Malta and tourists coming to Gozo, while keeping Gozo an island and protecting it from excessive traffic. Also, when will the public swimming pool be delivered? I hear it will be mostly for private use.

And the stairs leading from the bus terminus to St Francis Square?

And air transport with small fixed winged aeroplanes from Gozo?

I am not seeing any new projects which benefit the residents. I only see the unabated destruction of the little natural ridges we still have. The empty optimism penned by the Gozo Minister does not impress me greatly.

Let us envisage Gozo and Malta in 10 years' time. Will it be a better place to live in, or will it be more claustrophobic, disorganised and an urban jungle with less open spaces and gentle hills and slopes and valleys?

Joe Portelli

Nadur