I've lived here as an expat for almost a decade now, and I keep hearing the same bullshit arguments over and over and over. At some point, you have to realise that the situation is so bad that you no longer can just blame it on whatever party you don't vote for. So let's look at the facts – where we currently are right now:
Healthcare – GHS Index ranking: 77th place. We're surpassed by countries like Paraguay, El Salvador, Mongolia, Albania, Belarus, Vietnam, India – and many more.
Schools: The University of Malta ranks between 750th – 1150th place worldwide, depending on what stats you're looking at.
Police: I mean…
Public transport: No extra buses during peak hours is pure stupidity. The problem is not too many people. The problem is a terrible system. By far the worst public transport system I've ever encountered in any country. The only well-functioning part of public transport in Malta is the Gozo Ferry (Cirkewwa-Gozo).
Electricity: I mean what the fuck. Promises, promises and more promises – while it's getting worse. It's a joke. This while Enemalta and politicians keep patting themselves on the shoulder for the "investments" that have been made to improve it.
Pollution A – air: You keep blasting off fireworks 300 days a year. Haven't you noticed that the air is polluted enough? Haven't you noticed the increase in allergies? Are you not fed up with not being able to breathe properly? When is enough, enough? When will you let this stupid tradition die in hell where it belongs?
Pollution B – noise: I have tinnitus after having lived here for 9+ years. Keep honking at everything, and keep those drills active 24/7. Keep shouting at each other while standing 1 meter away from the person you're talking to. We'll all be deaf throughout our retirement.
It won't matter if Party A or Party B wins. We will still be facing the same issues. Every party before every election spits out a plethora of promises (read: lies) that are never lived up to – or fixed. And the reason behind the problems is always what the other party has done.
Before I get a "go bekk" comment, I want to add this: This post is written in frustration by someone who overall loves this country. I want to see it flourish. I want to see it move forward towards better times. I want to see Malta being what it should be – and deserves – the very fucking best.
But we can't get there as long as you keep throwing shit at each other's parties without taking any accountability or responsibility for your own, or your parties' actions.
by AgentCapital8101
22 comments
Don’t be negativv. We have the sea and the sun…thinking about it…we have the sun.
Unfortunately, there is nothing I disagree with this post.
It makes me sad, because I also love this country.
You really went through the hassle to write all this just to complain about your country?
It’s tge same shit I keep reading every day in this sub, but often narrowed down to 2 sentences
Jeez dude u really did that did you
imagine blaming 60 or so days of fireworks for the pollution instead of excessive cars, constant air traffic and huge cruiseliners.
Don’t get me wrong I am not fond of fireworks but it’s part of the culture.
Healthcare is Malta is better than what I experienced in all other EU countries. I don’t know what that index is or means, but that was not my experience.
You forgot:
Corruption: Malta is #55 on the Corruption Index (lower ranking = more corruption). That’s below: Saudi Arabia, Rwanda, Qatar and Botswana.
Trees: Malta is ranked #213 (out of 215 countries) on the Forest Index, yet in deciding to build a new green park or a new road, or something concrete, the road/concrete always wins.
Let people keep bashing their heads and pretending like this is “being negative” when all you’re doing is pointing out the obvious facts.
It’s all a bubble and at some point it will burst, very much to the detriment of our people (I don’t mean just the Maltese; I mean anyone living here that gives a fuck).
People are VERY quick to blame the foreigners, particularly third-country nationals because it’s easy to blame them, but why do we not blame the companies and other entities that think “oh we need some cheap labour for a crap job no one wants to do; hire some Nepalese or Filipino and pay them minimum wage or less”, or restaurateurs going “oh no Maltese person wants to be paid minimum wage to work weekends and public holidays serving the ungrateful public while on their feet all day, no one wants to work any more” and use it as an excuse to keep hiring some poor abused and desperate foreigners.
As you have pointed out we have ruined our air quality, our environment, there’s far too much noise, our education is subpar, infrastructure is dogshit even though we keep taking tons of EU funds, our healthcare cannot keep up with demand at all, public transport while free is completely unreliable, so on and so forth. Not to mention we have so many mentally ill people who want Joseph fucking Muscat back in power, literally labelled one of, if not the most corrupt men in the world.
Until there is a massive shift in our way of thinking, which is HIGHLY unlikely, we’ll keep going down this path until this place is borderline unliveable and just ends up as some Netflix documentary.
Which part of the island you live in? That makes some difference.
Malta went to shit a long time ago. There’s no hope. Myself and a lot of other youngsters will seek to emigrate away from this place. Plenty of other Mediterranean places with real identity.
Maltese are only interested about MONEY, nothing else. That’s why nothing will change
Thanks to the OP. One of the most useful pieces of information I’ve read here.
The only way to improve public transport is to RESTRICT cars. Can you imagine any politician running on a platform where people couldn’t have more cars than people in their household. In some countries, there’s a cost to owning a car in the order of thousands of dollars -imagine doing that. It would kill Bolt overnight. But without it, there’s no way to improve public transport.
The rest? Fireworks? Big deal compared to cars. Electricity? That’s a non-trivial issue.
Schools? The University of Malta might not rate highly …that seems bad but it’s indicative of a small region. My alma mater is currently 206th in the world. My postgrad alma mater is 498th. It’s really not a big deal.
I’m very curious about the healthcare ranking. Where’d you get that stat? I think there’s context missing.
Housing!
To solve the oversupply someone in the government came up with the genius plan to invite TNCs for low wage jobs so apartments can be filled to the rim and prices kept high.
But this can be of course filed under corruption.
Edit, before I get an upvote:
Don’t forget about the spitting!
You complain and still live here…
It won’t matter if Party A or Party B wins. We will still be facing the same issues. Every party before every election spits out a plethora of promises (read: lies) that are never lived up to – or fixed. And the reason behind the problems is always what the other party has done.
Exactly this. The tribal mentality and the “as long as i get my way” will never go away irrelevant of which ever party is in power
Pollution C
Streets are full of trash, rats and cockroaches infesting houses everywhere because they find plenty of food all over the urban area. The lack of a real garbage collection system is unreal.
Fireworks barely have any real impact on Malta’s air quality, as several academic studies show. The biggest problem with Malta’s air pollution (by far) is dust which blows in from the Sahara and there’s pretty much nothing any of us can do about it. The second biggest problem are cars, not fireworks.
The University’s ranking is pretty good across almost all departments. It’s consistently ranks in the top 10% of universities worldwide. Which is great for a tiny university on a tiny island.
Some other facts:
WHO ranks Malta’s healthcare system as the 19th best in the world. Pretty good, I’d say.
We consistently have among the lowest unemployment rates in the EU.
We have the greatest economic growth, by some distance, in the EU. And we’ve kept this up for years.
Studies show that trust in the police is at an all-time high and rising.
That’s not to say everything is great and we don’t have problems (some of which you’ve listed). Our infrastructure is poor, traffic is a nightmare that nobody wants to solve, we’re plagued by corruption and poor governance, people are losing faith in institutions etc. But let’s keep things in perspective.
And in anticipation of possible hate speech and accusations that foreigners must go back their kantrij, we also top the the list of [people most affected by hate speech](https://timesofmalta.com/article/maltese-affected-hate-speech-europe-study.1095075)
Is there some statistic showing the abysmal lack of trees. For a place with so much sun I never understood why we don’t invest in trees to provide some shade.
My wife and I are on vacation rn. Experiencing electricity outages. We heard it is happening all the time.
We were really surprised not to see a single solar panel or wind power, whilst Malta is having 300+ sunny days per year. Also the small island would be perfect for low cost electric cars, since the longest distance you can drive is like 30km.
So wtf? it would be so easy to power Malta in a sustainable, reliable, cheap way.
I am a patriotic Maltese Youth and I want to leave Malta ASAP. The only thing keeping me here is family.
The most frustrating is public transport imo, heavy dependance on private cars touches on many of the issues mentioned.
The routes barely changes from the introduction.