Malta has its advantages, but also has its fair share of problems.

The small size of our country means that we run into friends and people we know quite frequently. It means that we don’t have to travel far to shop for our essentials. It means that we are never far from our workplace, even though sometimes it feels like we are due to traffic. It means that we are never far from places of entertainment.

Malta’s position in the middle of the Mediterranean means that we can be a bridge between North Africa and Europe, and Malta has worked to be that bridge. So from a diplomatic perspective, we can play an important role.

But being so small comes with certain disadvantages also. For instance, we have a traffic problem. We keep eating up our green areas within our localities, and the main issue with this is that space is limited, so every bit of green counts. Being a group of islands also means that we have extra importation costs.

But many of Malta’s problems do not stem from the fact that the island is small. No. They stem from the lack of planning, and in some cases a lack of care and selfishness.

Traffic, for instance, should have been solved by now. Successive governments have had chances to fix the issue and so far, all have failed.

In terms of Malta’s green areas well… a lack of planning as well as greed does come to mind. We have no real masterplan for the islands. The government launches Project Green, and then we hear of a tender which the government has opened for the perpetual revisable emphyteusis of an open area of around 5,300 square metres right in the middle of an area known as Mellieha heights.

One can ask, is enough being done to keep communities happy… or are major developments being allowed through to the detriment of the people?

One must also acknowledge that Malta has an overpopulation problem. This issue becomes multiplied during the summer months, during peak tourism season. Now this isn’t an easy situation to tackle. What could be done, perhaps, is targeting more upmarket tourists, going for quality tourism rather than quantity for instance. As for the growing population in Malta, well that’s tied to the economy, but one must keep in mind Malta’s limited size. There is no easy solution to that, but one hopes that the government is thinking ahead.

Then of course there are the political issues. First of all, the resignation culture is practically inexistent on the island, and when something scandalous occurs, denials, deflection and the pointing of fingers tends to take place. This is wrong. When a major scandal occurs, political responsibility must be upheld, and not doing so just shows that one would be looking out for themselves rather than what is right.