If it’s peak summer, it must be troubled Swieqi and its long-suffering citizens time!

Residents of Swieqi are once again bracing themselves for the mayhem, misbehaviour and crime which comes each year with summer. They have just marched in a demonstration to meet their councillors and to draw attention to crime in their locality.

Each year, Swieqi residents – educated, middle-class, well behaved, upright citizens – living adjacent to St Julian’s and the lawlessness of Paceville, have to put up with fighting, shouting, swearing, urinating, revving cars and worse in their streets from night-time through to the early hours of the morning.

Swieqi is cursed by its location close to Paceville, which daily attracts a stream of young, unruly foreign and Maltese young people who pass through on their way to the bright lights and bars of Paceville.

The crime rate in Swieqi is estimated to be double the Maltese average, with burglaries amounting to five times this. Regrettably, this is not a new problem. Successive administrations have been aware of it. The local councils of Swieqi (and St Julian’s) have long drawn attention to it and pleaded for more resources and greater central government support to little apparent avail.

While successive ministers for home affairs (the last, notably, former minister Manuel Mallia, who promised foot patrols last year before his fall from grace) and ministers of tourism have promised to do something to improve the situation, this has not happened.

Why? The finger of blame for dealing with such lawlessness can only be pointed at the Malta Police Force. For reasons best known to successive recent commissioners of police, pleas from the local council have gone unheeded. A police station was officially inaugurated in Swieqi last year but the promised foot patrols have not materialised. The police presence in Paceville, Swieqi and St Julian’s is clearly not an effective deterrent to crime.

It seems obvious that successive commissioners have failed to deploy their manpower resources to reflect the priority needs of an area where the incidence of crime dictates there should be a larger police presence. It is about time that (another) new Police Commissioner takes a grip of the situation.

Swieqi residents have made a number of constructive suggestions to tackle the problem. These range from the introduction of residential or timed parking in Swieqi as a means of discouraging the number of cars parked there by non-residents, to making the foreign language schools – whose students are thought to be the cause of most of the appalling drunken behaviour – accountable for the behaviour of their students and if need be fined in addition to any fines levied on the students themselves.

While these two proposals may suffer from practical deficiencies, they demonstrate the extremes to which residents are being driven by the current situation.

Another workable proposal which the residents have made is the installation of surveillance cameras at key points along frequently used roads, crossroads and corners.

Add to this the long-promised regular police patrols on the streets of Swieqi and the deterrent effects should be most effective. The citizens might then enjoy greater confidence in a more secure and peaceful environment in which to lead their lives, as they are entitled to.

The bottom line is the need for the forces of law and order to make their presence visible and the application of the rule of law to bring order to the lawless streets of Swieqi.