We may not have time or aptitude to think and remember for this fiery, unremitting, heat just fries your brain. But late summers in Malta have always been the same. With the temperature peaking over 40 degrees and feeling like 45. And the walls too hot to touch.
This summer we have been having a tsunami of photos showing mounds of rubbish outside doors making Malta look like a huge rubbish tip.
Apart from people wringing their hands, some people chose to take the initiative and clean around them. The mayor of Sliema opened up some garbage bags and from the evidence in the bags named and shamed the miscreants.
It does not seem he continued with his campaign. The rubbish outside doors continued to accumulate, but only, it would seem, in certain specific areas – where the relentless construction of the past years has pulled down the traditional houses and replaced them with apartments, where many of the tourists are staying in b&b for short stays.
I want to make it clear I am not condoning lawbreaking or litter on the streets but please tell me how one can keep leftovers and food remains inside an apartment? Or how are people who have to go to work to bring out their rubbish at the stated times? Or how do tourists get to leave their rubbish when their plane times don’t coincide with rubbish collection times?
I agree there are people who disregard the rules of the country they are holidaying in especially when they learn there is no enforcement and they can get away with anything.
But when they find out the rules are not practical and have not really been drawn up with the best interests of the collectivity in mind, they are then sorely tempted to give up on them.
In fact, we Maltese can tell them. There was almost no consultation carried out and one almost suspects the timing suited the rubbish collectors who mainly employ Third Country nationals thus revealing a certain frame of mind. Until a few years back they still employed very dirty and old trucks until the government of that time stepped in and helped them modernise their fleets – and even then they got second hand trucks which they have not got round to remove the original names of companies from different parts of the UK.
At first it was every town or village with its own rubbish collection timetable and it is quite recently they came together and regionalised the system. That removed a certain number of vehicles from the roads (hardly noticeable seeing vehicles are still flooding in). It also helped Wasteserve operate better.
But this new version did not help the people in apartments or the tourists in b&bs. So people were left to fend for themselves, with predictable results.
There are also people who have their bulky refuse and the local councils operate their own system which is completely free. But you still get people dumping their bulky refuse (eg tiles, old appliances, etc) in remote places in the countryside where they think nobody will see them.
The point is the system is not the best one and has been drawn up with the interests of the operators prevailing on the interests of the public.
Instead, I argue, it does not make sense to have just two black bag collection days in a week. It just does not make sense for the collectors to see rubbish outside doors and leave it there for “the colour of the bags is not the right one today”.
In retail the prime maxim is “the customer is always right“ but the councils have turned it on its head. On the contrary the government must make the councils remove any rubbish on the streets and argue and sue and fine later. How can any councillor pass by uncollected rubbish and not do anything about that this very same day?
There are many things going wrong in Malta today but the overall image of a country overtaken by rubbish is one that will not easily forgotten. No amount of open air concerts will obliterate this.
Think also of danger to health (and this applies too to contaminated swimming areas and generally at the end of summer all highly popular beaches) and realise we are our worst enemies.
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