Malta and Gozo have been invaded.  Invaded by the clutches of the pro-business mentality that today’s political class has fostered, and by the clutches of greed as more and more businesses and business owners do their best to make a quick buck irrelevant of all the costs. 

All people have to do is take one look around them to confirm this: noise, more and more public spaces taken up by an orgy of tables and chairs, more and more of the country’s land taken up by a rabble of development.

And now – for another year – we can see that this mentality has spread to one of the last bastions of Malta’s pristine natural environment: Comino.

Once an unspoiled paradise, the most significant areas of the island have now been taken up by more of the scourge, the likes of which have ravaged other public areas of Maltese coastline.

Pictures shared last week by the NGO Moviment Graffitti show how deckchair vendors cover every inch of the shoreline with deckchairs and umbrellas from the crack of dawn, making it practically impossible to enjoy this national treasure unless you pay €12.50 per person.

“Anyone assertive enough to move the deckchairs aside, as is their right, is met with verbal aggression and intimidation,” the NGO said, describing – rightly – the island as something of a Wild West for lawlessness.

Tourism Minister Clayton Bartolo has since insisted that this will not be allowed to take place and that operators must remove their deckchairs if people do not wish to rent them.

Forgive us for being sceptical, but this is the same tripe usually uttered by the government before closing both its eyes and ears and allowing the status quo to persist.

While we don’t know the terms of the current licence (or even if any of the current operators even have a licence), previous licences included that deckchairs could not be set up unless they were rented by people.  That was a term which was, naturally, cheerfully ignored.

Perhaps it’s no coincidence that no police officers will be stationed on the island between 8:30pm and 9am in summer.  Deckchairs are littered across the bay long before 9am.  One only hopes that if deckchairs are being set up illegally, then the police have no qualms whatsoever to force operators to remove them.

Moviment Graffitti have since written to five ministers with demands ranging from sunbeds and umbrellas only being rented on the request of people and only occupying a specific percentage of the beach, limiting the number of kiosks, and making sure that commercial activity at Blue Lagoon is on the basis of permits which cover a financial contribution for the upkeep of the bay amongst others.

These are reasonable demands.  It remains to be seen whether any of the five ministers will have a reply for them, or whether they prefer to follow the usual government strategy of covering their eyes and ears in the face of clear environmental exploitation and destruction.

Let’s now see whether the Tourism Minister’s promise that action will be taken against the status quo is not just empty words. Forgive our scepticism, but we’ll believe it when we see it.