Knocking-out Gozo

Gozo and the Gozitans are currently at the receiving end of knock-out operation that will soon cripple the island and its business.

On June 1, Gozo Channel Company went ahead with the announced increase in ferry fares, the third in two years. In the last 24 months, a ferry crossing for a motorist holding a Gozitan ID card and his car has almost doubled from Lm2 to Lm3.50 - a huge rise of 75 per cent. No Gozitan worker, whether a government employee or private entrepreneur, has received a pay increase that is a tenth of this astronomic rise.

This rise is also the result of some 3,000 persons who normally reside in Malta, but who now have a Gozitan address on their ID card. Gozitan workers and students are obliged to travel to Malta daily or several times a week.

Government had rightly partly subsidised their ferry crossing. Malta residents who have actual or virtual property in Gozo have decided to make illicit use of this subsidy intended for Gozitan students and workers. Some 3,000 of them decided to transfer their residence to Gozo. In this context, virtual property refers to residences of friends of friends, to inexistent rooms in fields, yachts in Mgarr harbour...

As a result, Government has been compelled to subsidise an extra 3,000 persons who travel to Gozo with their car for leisure purposes. For Government, read yours truly and his fellow Gozitans who have to travel to Malta several times a week for work and study purposes. Read also every single Gozitan, who will now have to pay more for all sorts of goods coming from Malta - as the delivery people and merchants will pass on this increase in fares to consumers.

This rise was partly justifiable because of the better service offered by the new Gozo Channel ferries. The service has indeed been upgraded but there is a lot more to be done. Customer service is awful. A friend of mine who last December faxed a letter of complaint to the general manager and who received verbal confirmation of receipt from his secretary, is still waiting for a reply. Is it so difficult for Gozo Channel to reply to complaints?

When we are paying the ferry fare, are we not also forking out money to Gozo Channel Company to pay customer services personnel?

Another blow was dealt to Gozo recently by Air Malta and, more precisely, by the new contractors of its in-flight magazine. The monthly magazine Malta This Month made its last appearance in March and was replaced by a bi-monthly, the KM. It has been contracted to a Canadian publisher, CountryProfiler Ltd, on behalf, I am informed, of a Maltese publisher whose name does not even figure in the publishing data box. The magazine is in fact compiled and printed in Malta.

The presentation is better than the former; the photography and the contents are inferior. This in-flight magazine has been reduced to another run-of-the-mill advertisement publication with several articles that are also adverts. One often saw travellers picking a copy of Malta This Month and placing it in their hand luggage at the end of the flight. Travelling some six times with Air Malta since April, I have seen people giving KM a cursory look and then putting it back. So much so that a couple of weeks ago the copy of the magazine in front of me was filthy.

Worse for Gozo, is that Air Malta has kicked out the article on Gozo from its magazine. Malta This Month carried interesting features about Gozo with beautiful illustrations each month. These helped in no small way to publicise the island. So from this column, we invite Euchar Mizzi, a Gozitan, who sits on the board of directors of Air Malta, to see to it that the feature on Gozo is resumed as soon as possible.

It is stated in the data box that this is a temporary interim publication. Hopefully, the non-interim publication will give Gozo its due.