I believe it is time for our political leaders to address the chronic overcrowding that is occurring in Malta.

Surely, our economists and politicians can come up with economic growth/value adding policies that don’t rely on the easy option and simple principle of more ‘bums on seats’.

Surely, we can come up with strategies that increase the value/quality of our tourism and immigration, for example, without building more large hotels and towers while taking away more open space.

Just two examples might be linking any new developments to a mandatory requirement by developers to contribute to restoration in places like Valletta and developing Gozo into a high cost, exclusive tourist destination, as they have successfully done in the Maldives, rather than build a bridge and allow it to become another Buġibba/Qawra/St Paul’s Bay.

This obsession with quantity, at the expense of quality, needs to stop. If it doesn’t, the process will eventually reach a point where it becomes dysfunctional and this country will go into decline. It will then be too late and too difficult to repair.