Valletta on a Friday is usually jam-packed with tourists visiting Malta on gleaming cruise liners that are now calling in increasing numbers. Right after they are disgorged into the Valletta Waterfront, where they are bound to a get a very good impression of the island, having first whetted their appetite, as it were, by the majestic sight of Grand Harbour as their ships pass by the breakwater, they are herded into Valletta about which they must have read so much on their way to the island.
Their first impression of Malta is, therefore, generally superb. Their second? Disastrous − one that is likely to stick in their minds for long, even if they manage (for the queues are sometimes too long) to see the magnificent interior of St John's Co-Cathedral. It would be grossly unfair to dismiss out of hand the improvements made in Valletta and elsewhere, but there is one problem the country has been unable to grapple with − shabbiness.
Taking Valletta first, in no time after they land, the cruise tourists come face to face with the city's gate of shame. Their guides choose as their first stop of their tour this "stately entrance".
As they pass by the Tritons fountain, with its main plates uneven, its base usually black with accumulated dirt, and the surrounding pavement potholed all over, they wriggle their way through a maze of buses. If they just happen to cross the stretch from the fountain to the gate at the scheduled departure time of buses, they may even face the risk of being run over!
On their right and left as they are marshalled into the city, they are regaled by the sight of a hotchpotch of kiosks, ghastly structures, with their wares, from underwear to cakes, spilling over the fringes. Taxis bar the way, or most of it, and karozzini stand by for custom. The state of the gate and of the square beyond is just as horrible.
When will Malta wake up to face reality? The country is so obsessed with politics that it is taking us ages to come to grips with other matters that have been calling for urgent attention for years on end. Economically, the country has made great progress. Politically, too, it has moved ahead. The country is now a member of the European Union and is already using the euro as its currency. There has been steady progress in infrastructural development as well but there is one big lacuna in development: the seeming inability to tackle, on a national basis, the mounting problem of dirt in public places, the environmental neglect and decay so evident in so many places and, equally evident, lack of maintenance.
One of the best projects undertaken so far is the setting up of the Environmental Landscape Consortium, the people who have given a touch of green to the island. The country now needs to set up another consortium to take over the cleaning up of public places and their maintenance. It is highly arguable if Malta needs all the number of quangos it has today but, surely, an organisation that can well make a difference to Malta's image is a consortium that will take care of the island's upkeep on an ongoing basis.