On June 20, 2014, my letter ‘Lunar landscape in Birkirkara’ – referring to Triq B. Bontadini, the road on whose side the Infetti football grounds lie – was published. Although the road itself is familiar to many who have the misfortune to drive through it, the letter was meant to highlight the incompetence of the Birkirkara local council, which had ignored the e-mails I had sent until that day.

I was delighted by the promptness of the Birkirkara mayor in responding to that letter, both via e-mail on the day it was published and also by means of a subsequent letter in Times of Malta on June 24, 2014.

If council members read their e-mails as readily as they read their newspapers, then I’m sure their customer service would improve handsomely.

In her reply, the mayor said: “The council is doing its utmost to better its financial position since the area in question is one of our main priorities.”

A year later, the full length of the road (not to mention the surrounding roads) has seen only further deterioration. If the council handles its top priorities with such neglect, then we can only begin to imagine how it deals with its lesser priorities. We know that the Birkirkara council “does not have the funds at the moment to be able to carry out the necessary works” (according to last year’s article).

If this is really the only cause of the council’s problems, one can only wonder why people continue to hold their office without having the necessary resources to carry out their work, in a system that is fundamentally broken.