We recently received a communication from St Julians local council informing us that they were going to remove the rubbish skips.

Their reasoning was that San Ġwann council had removed theirs and now many people from that locality were dumping their rubbish in “our” skips.

Can I make a plea to all local councils to think again?

What was at worst a localised occasional problem has now developed into a major prob-lem. Rubbish is dumped everywhere now, cats open the bags in their efforts to obtain food and litter is scattered everywhere. Thus, the streets of Malta are becoming one large refuse site.

Is this really what the councils wish to achieve?

The government should oversee and coordinate efforts to ensure that councils do not compete with each other for the title of “dirtiest locality in Malta”.

Individuals also have a large role to play in this. There is absolutely no point in leaving one’s garbage bag on the street at 9 a.m. when the collection service has passed by at 8.30! Given that current collections are done every other day this is a recipe for disaster – the rubbish bag will remain on the street for two nights – and is also actually illegal and will lead to prosecution and the fines that can be imposed are huge.

There is also the added risk that this will lead to the spread of disease. Do we want the large rats in Malta to live on the streets near to our homes?

So, people and government, let’s please all attempt to keep our streets as clean as possible and make Malta a safer and nicer place to live in.