The Minister for Infrastructure, Transport and Communications at times provides us with a bit of stress relief as anyone with a modicum of common sense knows that charging non-residents a higher fare for public transport is outrageously and indisputably harebrained. So nonsensical, impractical and above all bad for our image is such a measure that although I am confident the constituted bodies will oppose it most vigorously I am afraid that should the minister take a similar attitude to that which he took with the 128 artistes who signed the letter requesting the government to modify and revise the Piano plans we might actually have this comic, were it not so tragic, situation materialise for real.
When faced with a politico who appeared in the national media gleefully declaring the artists and intelligentsia of Malta, a member of which Austin Gatt certainly is not, have to learn that because they, the artists and intelligentsia, live in a democratic country, presumably Malta, they must understand that once the government has taken a decision these same artists and intelligentsia must go along with it willy-nilly; we must make no allowances. Democratic country my eye! Have we, in the last five years, forgotten all about the famous djalogu (dialogue)?
What Dr Gatt conveyed is, in a nutshell, the dictum and credo of a fledgling totalitarian state and certainly not that of a democratic one.
To return to the two-tiered bus fare proposal, which beggars belief, this, among other things, would mean it will now take the best part of two hours to get from St Julians to Valletta instead the best of one! Getting to Valletta mid morning today takes just under an hour, most of which, a third, in fact, is taken up when charging alighting passengers and giving change. Should we now have to have our residency documentation examined as well, it would take two hours and the option would be it would take me less time to fly to Rome. Maybe it has been too long since Dr Gatt took a ride in a bus but I do so quite regularly, so I know exactly what travelling by bus means.
To return to the tariffs; a few years ago, two young Frenchmen, one the son of a former Prime Minister of France and the other the scion of one of the oldest and most exclusive of Parisian antique dealers, decided to come to Malta on holiday. They did not get much help from our Paris tourist office. The Maltese incumbent was in Malta at the time and a very terse and unhelpful French employee did her best to fob them off, good and proper. They arrived in Malta and checked into a Paceville-based hotel wondering where on earth they had got to. Deciding to make the best of it they walked down to Spinola and decided to do themselves proud at one of the best restaurants there.
As they were exhausted and had done justice to a couple of bottles of wine, they hailed a taxi, whereupon in two minutes flat were whisked back to their hotel. To their utter astonishment and consternation the taxi driver asked for the princely sum of Lm6! We had not yet converted to euros, however, after a quick calculation, they were not so blotto after all, they realised they were going to be charged €14 for a two-minute ride. They protested, which you know and I know was a big mistake. In the melee, the son of the former Prime Minister got a black eye. Pandemonium ensued and the French Ambassador and the Minister of Foreign Affairs had to be woken up in the middle of the night while the courts had to open at the crack of dawn next day to hear the case with urgency. The son of the former Prime Minister flew back to Paris while his friend stayed here wondering what to do with himself, which is when I met him at an art exhibition that same evening and next day took him on a whirlwind tour of Malta à la KZT!
Mercifully, his soured impressions of Malta changed radically and I will not forget his enthusiastic conversation from the battlements of St Angelo with his mother when she phoned to enquire whether he had survived any further Malta barbarisms.
This is what happens when people like taxi drivers become a law unto themselves. Therefore, to propose the institutionalisation of a similar abuse in our public transport system is sheer insanity. Can you imagine what sort of coverage Malta would get in the international press? Our reputation would be in tatters. Come to Malta to be fleeced…
I have been lucky enough to have been abroad many times and have, to date, never ever paid higher tourist rates for public transport. A Go As You Please pass valid for a week in New York, which works on buses and the underground, costs $25 and when one calculates the vast distances in NY, the ticket’s potential and the fact that one can use it as much as one likes, the cheapness of that $25 tariff is mindboggling. But then I suppose New York has to bend over backwards to get its allotment of tourists and Malta doesn’t.
This attitude must be nipped in the bud before it becomes an epidemic emulated by every cheapskate owning gimcrack establishments, which, sadly, are the ones that tend to trap the unwary tourist. It is bad enough we Maltese nationals, let alone our visitors, have to pay to get into St John’s Co-Cathedral unless we can prove we wish to worship there, which is one of the most idiotic notions I have ever had the misfortune to come across. My personal devotion to St Jerome has saved me many a euro!
I have been into countless churches, mosques, temples, basilicas and cathedrals all over the world and have never ever paid a penny to visit them. One only pays to visit the ancillary museum. At most, there are collection boxes and one can always opt to put in a coin to light up a painting or two. In San Luigi dei Francesi, where there are no fewer than three Caravaggios in the Contarelli side-chapel, all one does is pop a coin to light the paintings up and that is all. In Malta we pay and the tourists who queue there every day have to pay too. One almost has visions of Christ with a whip shouting that they have turned his father’s house into a den of thieves! For shame!
kzt@onvol.net