The interview in The Business Observer (March 9) with the new head of the Mrieħel Enterprise Zone Foundation provided a rare glimmer of hope in the current context of doom and gloom, and stubborn individualism. Keith Fenech was appointed the chief executive officer foundation last August, taking over the reins of the organisation set up in March 2016 as a ‘joint venture’ between the government, represented by Projects Malta, and 18 operators from the private sector.

He was faced with a seemingly intractable problem.

Mrieħel is a zone the size of Valletta with more than 250 operators and 6,000 people working there, in a variety of competing and conflicting sectors.

Financial services operators – and the financial services authority – banks and audit firms, have an uneasy stand off with delivery trucks and containers trying to manoeuvre between double parked cars and craters, not to mention two pockets of residents.

It was a veritable no man’s land: unlike other industrial parks, it was not government land but mostly private. And it falls under no fewer than three local councils.

For decades, it was everybody’s problem and nobody’s. There was no one to take matters in hand, from installing street lighting and repairing street lamps, to getting signage and organising road resurfacing, let alone to pressuring the bus company to provide more stops within the area, rather than just at its perimeters.

In the end, it took the vision of a few operators to get things going. Farsons, which has a huge investment programme under way, did not moan about the situation and about who should be responsible but it and 17 other operators took the bull by the horns. And guess what? Once they said they would do their bit (Farsons has given one of its offices to the foundation for 40 years), then the government agreed that it too would help.

So from a counterproductive situation where everyone was waiting for someone else to shoulder the burden, more and more stakeholders are now trying to help, from Enemalta fixing the street bulbs (so what was so hard about that?) to the government giving money to pave the worst of the roads (so why did that take so long?).

The companies are being asked to fork out a few thousand each – and the government is actually covering that cost for the small operators. Mr Fenech is using cognitive savvy to go for quick wins, from clearing 186 tons of waste to negotiating with private owners for temporary car parks, reassuring members that their money is being put to good use by issuing regular newsletter updates.

The foundation is based on the concept that everyone has something to gain, from less daily frustration to abstract branding of the island, from more productive employees to higher values for property.

At this rate, within the first three years of the foundation, the area will be unrecognisable.

The spirit of cooperation is all the more impressive for being so rare in this fractured and divisive island. The 18 founding members and the government will have created something that should serve as an example to many others.