With police stations in Nadur and Xagħra frequently found closed, those seeking the assistance of law enforcement in the two districts have been left with little direct recourse amid a seasonal rise in crime.

Nationalist Party MP Chris Said recently stated on social media that a number of robberies in Gozo had been reported but remained unsolved. When contacted by The Malta Independent on Sunday, the PN spokesperson for Gozo said that burglaries were relatively unheard of on the sister island until recently. In one particular case, he said, thieves had made off with some €60,000. This, he explained, was in addition to an increase in thefts from cars and on beaches.

“One must ask whether the police corps in Gozo has sufficient resources to combat this wave of theft. Are enough police officers working on this?” he said. “Do they have the necessary tools to solve cases of robbery and smash the criminal circles involved?”

Said urged the relevant authorities to take immediate action.

While the island of Gozo is not normally associated with high levels of crime, tourism destinations are often plagued by seasonal crime waves. With regard to Nadur and Xagħra, Said stated that he had found the police stations in each village closed whenever he walked past them. In his online post, he questioned why this was the case when they were supposed to have been ‘strengthened’. “Who took this decision? Is this the result of the corp’s lack of resources in Gozo?” he asked.

Nadur and Xagħra

“The local council has no remit over the Xagħra police station, even though they share the same building,” said Christian Zammit, the locality’s mayor. He told this newsroom that, in his position, he could only “put pressure on the police corps to increase its presence in Xagħra.” The recently elected mayor hopes that the locality’s police station will start to open regularly, and that more patrols will be carried out in the village – Gozo’s second largest after the island’s capital, Rabat. “Xagħra deserves a full police force and I appeal for continuous police presence in the area,” Zammit said, explaining that there were a number of traffic-related issues, including cars double – and sometimes triple – parked. He also told this newspaper that the elderly were often on the alert as their perceived vulnerability made them more likely to be targeted by thieves. “While Xagħra has a population of around 5,000, a large number of domestic and foreign tourists visit the village in summer,” he said.

Mayor of Nadur Edward Said is currently away on business and could not be reached. 

Questions sent to the Ministry for Home Affairs and National Security and the Malta Police Force were answered by the time of publication.