Tackling the social and economic situations of a small island region like Gozo has never been a straightforward issue. In a place where infrastructural improvement may easily trample on the environment, or where economic and educational advances imply significant social ramifications, striking a balance for a sustainable way forward is not always easy.

So far, this concerns what choice, what policy, what decision you take. However, in a place like Gozo there is also the issue of who will take that decision, who will fund it, and who will walk the talk.

The very recent festive season can be modestly but confidently qualified as a positive one for Gozo. This sustained a feel-good factor as visitors thronged the island and Gozitans could be seenparticipating in various events that dotted the social and cultural December calendar. This is the most recent of examples, but by no means the most important or significant.

The drop in unemployment figures and the welcoming of new private investment in Gozo are matters that count. The island awaits the foreign investment in healthcare, medical tourism andeducation and looks forward to reaping its benefits.

This, and other initiatives such as the recently established documentation management programme managed by ETC and run by Maltapost, will certainly help a significant number of persons and families. Thus, yes, the wheel is slowly but steadily going round.

Next comes the quantum leap. It is now time for Gozo to do more than just turn the wheel. It is not enough to throw a lifejacket to a drowning man; you have to pull him ashore, help him dry up and get on successfully with his life.

A child learns to sit and tries to stand, learns to walk and eventually dares to run. That is the next step for Gozo: catching up with the rest of the country, with the rest of the continent.

In the last few months, the island continued to witness a number of small but consolidating steps such as the establishment of the Regional Statistics Unit of the NSO in Gozo.

This will not solve any particular problem for Gozo but it makes the place more equipped and resilient to counter difficulties and improve. It enables Gozo to be more focused.

Similarly, the establishment of the Gozo region within the LEAP project also allowed Gozo to be more focused on social issues as the project brought together a comprehensive array of stakeholders around one table to contribute and enact one highly tailor-made agenda. Key players in the field were not merely invited for consultations and decisions taken at higher and later stages but rather, they themselves were given the mandate to prioritise the agenda, to freely voice their concerns and to possibly take a focused action.

Focus remains of paramount importance, but it is focus that bears fruit. It has to be a focused stance that enables us to take the bull by its horns. Perhaps it is no longer time to stay idle in face of scourges like housing estates that regenerate social cases one generation after the next and play the rhetoric “because that’s the way it has always been”.

Now it is time to use the tools we are slowly but steadily forging to make a difference. We have to be incisive and decisive. We have to go against the flow and with a scientific, analytical and methodological approach tackle issues in a sensitive manner.

The island awaits the foreign investment in healthcare, medical tourism and education and looks forward to reaping its benefits

This all boils down to having a comprehensive and a collective approach – call it a masterplan if you like. It has to be a plan that draws all existing efforts and stakeholders together.

Gozo is not, and can never be a one-man show. A one-man show raises alienation and isolation to more hazardous levels than the geophysical isolation.

The Ministry for Gozo in this regard assumes a key liasing figure. Health, education, environment, employment and social affairs in Gozo for instance, form part of the national agenda, hence, part of the respective ministries’ remit. Of course, in Gozo they are facilitated with supplementary resources made possible by the Ministry for Gozo.

The application of the LEAP project in Gozo by the Ministry for Family and Social Solidarity and the investment of the Waste Treatment and Transfer Facility by Wasteserv with funds from the Ministry for the Environment are two prime examples of such inter-ministerial and inter-agency collaborations. Health and sports draw on this example as well.

I say this because sometimes one goes with the wrong perception that Gozo is there to strive on its own. We have to shun the fortress mentality.

The fortress mentality only leads us to a situation where there is only one expert service in Gozo that is delivered by a Maltese professional, once a month.

You miss that appointment, or it happens that there is a backlog and you have to wait another 30 days.

This scenario is known to happen regularly in a broad range of services, from social work to something as rudimentary as a mobile phone company technician.

The physical link is important but it is part of something larger, more holistic. The physical link has to bring about(or rather be preceded by) a change inthe mindset.

It has to challenge the idea that Gozo is a periphery and encourage its people to connect more.

We need a ‘masterplan’ that thinks out of the box; something that brings foreign economic injection if we really believe in the need to grow.

We need to scout for foreign investment and connections. We need to build an attractive Gozo that attracts its own offspring as much as it attracts the foreigners. Gozo has to be seen not as the end of any alley where you ‘end up’, but as a place from where you are connected to the world.

This needs to precede the physical link, and ultimately this will justify even more the physical link itself. This is the way we fight the brain drain and the population haemorrhage that is consistently reducing Gozo to an ageing population.

A number of valid people may help in drawing this masterplan. The Gozo regional development network met a number of these – some are locals, some are foreigners. They bring a wealth of experiences and expertise.

As there are many capable people around, one should initially scrutinise them well, but ultimately capitalise on the counsel they may be able to provide.

Mgr Joseph Vella Gauci is Gozo Regional Development Agent, LEAP Project.

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