On Monday, the leader of the opposition Bernard Grech opened his budget speech with a statement of solidarity with our frontliners. An obvious natural thing you would say. The only striking aspect in that is that the opposition’s appreciation for frontliners seems to be filling the void of any corresponding action by government. While government insists in highlighting ‘underlying conditions’ for every one of the 52 coronavirus deaths, Grech expressed a sincere apology and solidarity with all the victims and their families.
What’s the matter with Government that it keeps on behaving with disdain with those fronting Mata’s fight against the pandemic? The absence of any concrete measure in solace or support to our frontliners in Minister Scicluna’s speech is not an isolated event. The constant tension with Doctors and Nurses associations are the tip of the iceberg in a relationship characterised by misunderstanding. This gets you thinking. How is it that the Labour Government who got used to buying out the silence or support of so many fail to do any inroads with our health professionals and others on the covid-19 frontline? Is it because they come to their decision with science and reason and hence will not accept arbitrary and ‘political’ decisions bowing down?
Meanwhile, hundreds are facing the cost of Government’s insensitivity. For while all of our professionals are normally happy doing their job out of duty and service, we all know that at the end of the day, we all expect that small gesture of appreciation by our employer and by public authority. For many fronting the Covid fight it is an altogether different story. In just a few days I spoke to several people on the frontline expressing their disgust at Government’s lack of appreciation for the difficult situation with covid-19.
Joe, a prison guardian, wrote to me telling me how he was put on forced quarantine due to a virus case with a colleague. Clearly a reasonable move. What’s less reasonable to Joe, and to any of use, is that Joe’s quarantine will have to count for his own personal sick leave.
Valerie, another frontliner, called me about her situation with leave at one of the public hospitals. She left her home to protect family. She was on stop-leave for a long while due to the pandemic. Now she has extra leave which she would need to carry-over to next year. She just received an e-mail that that will not be possible. Her sacrifice and commitment has counted for little to her employer.
Mario manages a care home. He is so proud that they had barely any cases of infection due to drastic measures limiting exposure by limiting staff turnover. To do this, he had to ask some staff members to work double and triple shifts. They obliged out of service to their clients and to country. Now they received their tax calculations with a whopping 25% tax rate on extra hours of overtime for very basic salaries.
Our frontliners deserve better. For this reason I nominated Dr Marily Casha on behalf of all frontliners in Malta to the European Citizens Prize. Dr Casha is a frontliner herself and wife to a Covid-19 victim Professor Aaron Casha. Their sacrifice came to the fore while many other cases suffer in the background including, as we speak, several frontliners affected by Covid-19 themselves through their line of duty.
Dr Casha’s nomination to the European Citizens Prize was my small gesture of appreciation for all frontliners. Government can do much much more. It already showed itself unwise in ignoring scientific advice and leading us into the critical situation we are in right now. The least we can do now is to recognise the personal sacrifice of those on the frontline of the pandemic and allow for small gestures of applied good reason to prevail over the faceless bureaucracy that has engulfed some government actions.
Good reason seems to be running out of supply quicker than medical supplies. Another case worth sharing here is that of a cattle farmer who was obliged to quarantine a few weeks ago. The authorities would not clarify if he can be afforded an exception to feed his animals. He could not take the risk of a hefty fine. On his return to the farm he was faced with a heart-breaking scene of two of his animals dying of hunger. The imposition of quarantine responds to a public good. Its application without any regard to particular circumstances is however unreasonable.
Faced with such situations we may come to reason that Malta in 2020 is heading towards a heartless state where numbers count before people, where we support industries, which is good, but forget the plight and commitment of hundreds of frontliners, where we assign a 16 million euro success fee to electrogas but can’t manage a reasonable bonus for our frontliners.
The nation cannot be made up of its GDP and trade figures alone. The nation is made up of the communion of good will of all its people, characterised by solidarity and fraternity. I hereby appeal on all those concerned to address this matter as a matter of national priority. We owe it to our frontliners, we owe it to our loved ones, we owe it to ourselves.
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