On the Dot...

Rubbish and filth have lain strewn near the Yellow Garage for days on end. Complainants to the council have been told this area is no man's land and that the last time it was cleaned it cost the council Lm600. This is no excuse. Something needs to be done, sooner rather than later.

Easy Going

More than a week ago work started for a new and wider pavement in front of the Ninu Cremona Junior Lyceum, in Victoria. Obviously work was not finished before the re-opening of the scholastic year. Now work is still in progress with all the inconveniences and danger for the hundreds of students who are next door. Why did this have to happen?

Soft Soap

Much ado has been made about how students returning to their schools will be struck by the new and improved versions after a long summer of work by gangs of workers. Some students who were not over-impressed, however, are those who attend Sir Anthony Lawrence Primary "B" in Birkirkara. Work on the toilets has started only recently and is still under way.

School Work

Fleur De Lys Junction, one of the many streets in Malta which contains a school complex, is now being closed to traffic at 8 a.m. This means that parents taking their children to school have to drop them off at either end of the street. Incidentally, it would not go amiss for some kind of system to be introduced under which staff at the four schools are issued some kind of pass to enable them to park either in unused school grounds or along the street.

Christmas Lights

Christmas 2003 passed, summer 2004 is nearly over and soon Christmas will be with us again and lower St Augustine Street close to St George's Bay in St Julians is still without the red bollards. There are no lights in front of Villa Rosa. The area, referred to as the Golden mile, is still without rubbish bins.

Blank Passage

The Mriehel By-pass, on the ex-Supermaster side, has been allowed to deteriorate to ghost town status, even where there are establishments still in use. Rubbish is strewn all over the place, rubble from unfinished buildings and, doubtlessly, debris that has been dumped there by unscrupulous people, combine to create an atmosphere that is far from sanitary, especially in the area between Pamsons and Androxa Furniture.

PIN Money

A person who had her wallet stolen overseas reports that so far, it has taken her bank more than two weeks to supply her with a new PIN number for her ATM card. Upon asking whether she could collect it personally, she was informed that this would entail a charge of Lm5!

Test Tubing

The forensic lab of the Malta National Laboratory has been in its death throes for a long time; all it needs is a coup de grace. This would, in turn, lead to a structure truly worthy of the adjective "national". It is high time that the various government departments and parastatal entities pooled their resources within a single creation as this would also lessen overheads even in the short run.

Branching Out

Last Tuesday trees were being pruned along Notabile Road in the morning rush hour. As a result, there were several traffic snarl-ups, near-misses and many people were late for work. The time might have been chosen so that the workers would not have had to work in the heat; however, one hour earlier or later would not have made any difference.

Money Talks

Clerks at the two major banks are over-keen to entice clients into subscribing for particular schemes. Not only do they mention these schemes when people are at their counters merely to cash cheques; they also call them at home, even if the clients would have professed no interest whatsoever when approached personally.

Car-A-Paces

The idea behind a car free day is not to do any unnecessary driving, the ideal way to voluntarily show that one cares for the environment. But many people found themselves going around in circles when they were not familiar with an area. Truly a case of "so close, yet so far". This event brought home once more the need for route buses to pass from peripheral areas in towns and villages, where elderly people may have anything up to a 20-minute walk to catch a bus. Meanwhile, one notes that in Greece, public transport on the day was free of charge.

Oh Buoy

Given the recent incidents involving divers encountering difficulties at sea - at times with tragic consequences - one wonders what sort of responsibility, legal or otherwise, diving instructors shoulder. Are there no legal obligations imposed on groups or individuals on diving expeditions? A rescue operation involves a lot of resources - human and financial - apart from human distress in cases of loss of life.

Mirror, Mirror

A shattered glass pane from the phone booth in Mimosa Street, Guardamangia, corner with Triq Joe Sciberras, has been lying on the ground, in the street-ward side, for several days now. Will it remain there until the rain washes the fragments downhill?