Police failure in entertainment areas

The news given in reply to a parliamentary question by the Minister of Justice, Carmelo Mifsud Bonnici, that in the first nine months of the year not a single person under the age of 16 was caught consuming alcohol in places of entertainment is incomprehensible.

The minister said he would be sending for the Commissioner of Police on the matter. I would have thought he would have done this before he answered the parliamentary question so as to inform the members and through them the public why this has happened.

Let us remember that here we are not talking only about Maltese 16-year-olds but the thousands of foreign students of the same age who come over to Malta to study English. The police in the entertainment areas are surely not carrying out their duties as they should be. However, is it possible that if policemen did not see any youngster drinking alcohol in bars they also missed those carrying and drinking bottles of wine and other spirits as they patrolled the streets? Every single sane person needs to spend less than an hour walking through certain areas and by certain shops to see that the law is being blatantly broken.

Since October the legal age for drinking alcohol has been raised to 17. I wonder if all the members of the police force have been informed about this. Let us wait and see what the figures will be at the end of the year.