On behalf of the Friends of Cottonera Forum, I would like to ask: Are the Three Cities being earmarked as a huge gambling district?

The Three Cities drastically need plans to promote and sustain a better social standard of living- Caroline Said, Cospicua

This would appear to be the case, with several applications recently being made for gaming rooms in the area. One permit has been applied for in Senglea in a shop which forms part of a historical residence and which violates almost every condition stipulated in Mepa’s parameters for permitting gaming outlets in residential areas.

Many other applications have been submitted in Cospicua recently.

Research shows that slot-machine establishments do not target those with disposable incomes but rather those who cannot afford to waste their income.

Given that gambling shops cost the government three times as much in terms of social support structures as the government earns from the gaming industry; given that many people in the Three Cities depend on income support to survive, this sudden interest in opening so many money-squandering establishments can only suggest that an insidious campaign is under way to exploit this area to the detriment of the communities as a whole.

Slogans on banners announcing the Dock One regeneration project spoke of “increasing accessibility and mobility for the community”. It would seem that the concept of mobility is being restricted to its literal sense (and even then the authorities’ grasp of the literal meaning of mobility is questionable given that half the original parking spaces in Cospicua have been removed simply to make the main road a little straighter).

Nonetheless, it doesn’t take much imagination and intelligence to recognise that what the Three Cities drastically need, besides landscape facelifts, are mechanisms to promote upward mobility and, specifically, plans to promote and sustain a better economic and social standard of living.

What, therefore, is the logic of introducing multiple gaming outlets in an area known, rightly or wrongly, for being a community of socially and economically suppressed people? Is the name of the game to keep them that way?