Editorial

Frank Salt is obviously a man who does not mind showing his head over the parapet wall. How refreshing! Here is someone who is daring to be plain and most salubriously frank. Frank Frank. It is a novelty, almost!

His warnings about tourism are not new, of course. But it is certainly new for them to be put so starkly. "It will not be long before everything crashes around us unless we do something about it now," Mr Salt said in an interview with The Times. Mr Salt is chairman of the Malta Tourism Authority's Planning and Product Directorate. As such, his views, unpalatable though they are, cannot, surely, be ignored.

It would be instructive to know exactly how the Minister of Tourism really looks on the emphatic comments Mr Salt made. When asked yesterday for his reaction (see page 5) he mostly waffled and, not quite originally, urged enforcement. In the political scene in Malta of course, it would be unthinkable for a minister to be quite as blunt as Mr Salt - the minister would be running the risk of facing the accusation that he is harming his government. And electorally, that would spell doom, something politicians in Malta cringe from, to our cost.

From what Mr Salt said, it appears that the Malta Tourism Authority has hardly any authority in many areas where it matters for tourism. And unfortunately for the government, his views cannot be lightly dismissed: Mr Salt says his directorate is fully behind him. Which makes one wonder what the use is of having these authorities - there are so many of them, and they do not come cheaply - if they have no authority to be authoritative.

Dr Zammit Dimech's reaction to that was that he did not agree that the MTA should have overriding powers or be responsible for everything that was related to tourism. Which Mr Salt had not suggested.

Mr Salt indirectly makes the strong accusation that the government does not seem to be aware of the situation. For that can be the only meaning of saying that "the government is under the wrong impression that we can get tourists irrespective of what we do". Can anything be more damning? How can the government address a situation of which it is apparently unaware?

Of course, the financial situation is desperate. And how. That is why suddenly ministers are talking of economising. Suddenly we see the need for vital reforms in health expenditure. And we must cut down on social services abuses. Which is all very proper. No one should try to delay what needs to be done, or act to hinder the necessary reforms. But the question arises: did we have to amass such a huge debt before starting to pull on the expenditure reins? Was not someone remiss in his duties?

To put it bluntly, the country can hardly afford the kind of expenditure Mr Salt says the industry needs - unless for instance, we stop the subsidies to the bus owners, who never deliver on improvements. But some ideas Mr Salt floats can be implemented immediately. Such as giving the tourism authority the last say in the management of sensitive areas. As Mr Salt points out, local councils have generally shown themselves to be not quite up to scratch in some areas. Mr Salt is sticking his neck out, promising results where others have failed. His challenge should be taken up: let us see what he can do. Things can hardly get any worse.