Since 2009, St Julian’s has registered the highest number of thefts in Malta. This residential and tourist magnet, which includes Paceville, had the highest number of home break-ins, armed robberies and muggings, as well as pickpocketing and snatch-and-grab incidents. Its 241 burglaries were well above the country’s average of 30. Neighbouring Swieqi, which for policing purposes forms a part of St Julian’s, also recorded a high incidence of crime.
The raw statistics alone, however, do not begin to describe the squalid picture on the ground in Paceville. The drunken behaviour of clubbers, the vomit and urine in the streets, the overtly sexual public behaviour of inebriated young people, the litter, squalor and vandalism, the frequent reports of punch-ups between partygoers in clubs and bars create an image of Paceville in St Julian’s which is not far off that of a biblical Sodom and Gomorrah.
To compound the situation, the funds allocated to St Julian’s council for cleansing the area, waste collection and for repair and maintenance of pavements and vandalised road signs are inadequate because the allocation is calculated on the number of residents in the area while the huge daily influx of visitors is the core of the problem. Add to these woes the traffic snarl-ups that daily afflict the area and the cataclysmic image is complete.
This is not a new problem. Successive administrations have been aware of it for several years. The local councils of St Julian’s and Swieqi have long drawn attention to it and pleaded for more resources and greater central government support. While successive ministers of tourism have wept crocodile tears and promised to do something to improve the situation, this has not happened. Indeed, as the statistics show, it has become worse.
Why? The answer is not difficult to find. The finger of blame for such lawlessness – for that is what the statistics demonstrate – can only be pointed at the Police Force.
For reasons best known to the last Commissioner of Police and, now, his successor, Peter Paul Zammit, pleas from the local councils of St Julian’s and Swieqi have gone unheeded. A police station was officially inaugurated in Swieqi 10 months ago, yet remains unmanned to this day.
A police presence in Paceville sufficient to act as a real deterrent to crime remains inadequate.
An analysis has revealed that, last year, police officers stationed in St Julian’s had to deal with about three times as many cases of theft, vandalism and bodily harm as their colleagues in the broadly similar-sized police district of Birkirkara. It seems obvious that successive police commissioners have failed to deploy their manpower resources in order to reflect the priority needs of an area where the incidence of crime dictates the need for a larger police presence.
It is about time, therefore, that the new Police Commissioner took a grip of the situation.
As to the funding of St Julian’s council, it is again clear that the budgetary allocation is insufficient for the special circumstances of St Julian’s, and Paceville within it, as the most heavily visited tourist entertainment hub in the country.
While the government has wisely ruled out any form of new ‘taxation’ or charge on visitors to the area, it is incumbent on the tourism minister and the parliamentary secretary for local government to negotiate a formula with the finance minister to compensate St Julian’s council for the circumstances in which it operates.