Hundreds of people are currently protesting in Malta’s capital Valletta, demanding an end to over-development and pro-developer policies, and demanding action to protect the country’s environment (photo source Times of Malta)

4 comments

1. Well, the people will have to decide between having income and an economy or having a natural and beautiful country. Because when we were there, it was a very small island with very few resources, so that tourism is really their only option, especially given the size of the population.

   A better education should be the priority, but folks in power never want that.

2. The same people will be protesting housing costs next week I guess.

3. Let me guess, all of the protesters have homes/apartments already. NIMBYs are a menace to society.

4. I live in Malta. It’s extraordinarily overdeveloped. Easily half the flats in my village alone must be unoccupied. It’s obvious because most of those aren’t even finished. They have no windows, doors, balcony railings, paint, appliances, etc. They are left in exposed shell form for year after year, being damaged by the sea air. Many of them will probably never be occupied, despite being only a few years old. Yet the village is still full of cranes building more. It’s also common to build without pulling permits, resulting in developments of dubious quality. All of this is a pretty common description of other villages throughout the area.

   Then there’s the fact that it’s a very small country, so it takes construction on only a handful of a given village’s roads to cause severe traffic problems. Whenever they pour concrete at a certain large project in my village for instance, the single road through town is blockaded for 30 minutes at a time. If an ambulance, fire truck, or rescue team needed to come through, someone would die.

   Malta has air pollution problems that should not exist, considering the strong sea winds and profound dearth of major industry. Idling cars aren’t just an inconvenience, they’re an air quality problem.

   Roads throughout Malta are chronically clogged. The government tried to address that last year by making buses free throughout the country. But since there are no bus lanes, the buses just get trapped in the same congestion as everyone else. Less fumes per capita, but no less frustrating when you need to be at work or school.

   Then there’s Comino, an island with a single digit population that the government wants to convert into an elaborate resort complex for the wealthy, over the objections of the people and literally hundreds of environmental NGOs. The island is a nature preserve currently, has no water sources, no significant power plants, no sewage, no stores, no restaurants, no landfill. The amount of disruption that would be required for the development’s infrastructure would be catastrophic to the preserve.

   The people see that development has far outstripped the needs of the local population plus tourism, and that it comes at the expense of public safety, health, and environment. Government corruption is rampant and blatant throughout the country. Construction projects here are remarkably slow, where even building a handful of flats can take most of a decade. So the consequences of construction are felt for a long time, only to see it lend far too little benefit in the end to one’s town and instead slowly decay until it becomes a crumbling public safety hazard. Construction standards here are poor, and walls here are typically just limestone bricks or else cinder blocks. So decay happens much faster than expected when a vacant property is not being maintained.