The authorities - including the police and Planning Authority - have to step up enforcement in Sliema, and residents need to cooperate with the upkeep of the locality, the mayor is urging.

The playground swings were repaired immediately.

One “very big headache” for the locality is illegal dumping, Anthony Chircop said following the publication of photos in this newsparer showing, among others, non-recyclable waste left at a bring-in site near Qui-Si-Sana.

The perpetrators were not always Sliema residents, according to Mr Chircop, but garbage bags do start piling up outside apartments from the morning, despite collection not scheduled until 7pm.

The collection takes place in the evening so as to ease traffic in the locality, whose streets are dotted with a daily average of 20 construction cranes.

The council is now considering moving collection to a later time, as some residents are not home by 7pm.

“According to planning rules, large developments should allocate a communal space where residents can dispose of their garbage.

“However, Sliema is now seeing terraced houses being transformed into multi-storey buildings. These have no such front room and rubbish generation is multiplying,” Mr Chircop said.

“In the case of domestic waste, we need more cooperation from residents, but also from the planning authority, which needs to keep this issue in mind when granting permits,” he insisted.

Mr Chircop said the locality used to be allocated some free hours of warden service, which it topped with €10,000-worth of monitoring every month.

Sliema Mayor Anthony Chircop

“It worked for three months, but it came at a massive cost, and when the system was overhauled, the locality was not allocated any free service any more.”

Another issue bothering the local council, and which it has been trying to regulate for three years, is the placing of sandwich boards along the waterfront, usually advertising ferry and cruise services and often blocking pedestrian access.

The council is in discussion with the tourism, trade, transport, lands and police authorities and should be coming up with a solution in the coming months.

Meanwhile, the council also receives complaints about hawkers along the front and the promenade that take up parking spots, a luxury in the locality.

Mr Chircop said the council had no say in the issuing of their permits, but it expected the police to step up enforcement when hawkers broke the rules, such as setting up stalls less than 50 metres away from other outlets.

On the state of the playground at Margaret Mortimer Garden (near it-Torri), Mr Chircop said that while the local council was responsible for its upkeep, some of the damage was done overnight.

Before

“I once stopped someone from setting fire to a dustbin in a playground during one of my early walks,” he said, complaining of a lack of police presence especially in the night, when people returned from entertainment areas.

The Margaret Mortimer Garden playground, which is inspected at least twice a year by an engineering company responsible for health and safety, has to be regularly repaired because of frequent damage.

The latest inspection was held last week, and the swings have been fixed since this newspaper took pictures of them broken.

After

The council does not yet plan on changing the playground equipment, as it intends to develop a three-storey underground carpark that would create 180 parking spaces. The project would have the same footprint as the current garden and would be overlaid with a playground.

Meanwhile, residents have also pointed out delayed work beneath the Sliema promenade on a lower belvedere which hangs over the rocky beach.

Mr Chircop said the place was earmarked for an outdoor gym, since the area was frequented by joggers. Works should be completed by the end of the month.