Current Mood: Frustrated

This country is slowly going to the dogs. Since yesterday the public transport operators are on indefinite strike. The apparent reason behind it is the removal of the monopoly, which – wait for it – operators of hearses (12 in Malta & 1 in Gozo as far as I know) have enjoyed since time immemorial. But it is obvious that there’s a more important agenda behind it; the forever looming public transport reform will come one day, putting an end to the pathetic system which is in place now. Well, hopefully it will, anyway.

A strike as such, though inconvenient for innocent bystanders (as usual!) wouldn’t be the end of the world. But this one in particular seems to develop into something far more serious. I don’t have the time nor the steam to give a complete breakdown of things; who is interested to learn more might consider googling it. Suffice it to say, things deteriorated considerably during the course of the day yesterday and were no better today, with troublemakers resorting to violence.

When my son arrived (safe and sound but tired, by the way) at around 1.30pm yesterday, it wasn’t so bad yet, and he was able to make his way to the ferry without a hitch. However, true to Murphy’s Law, a couple of Kempinski’s global sales managers from Germany and Switzerland, coming over at our invitation, had the misfortune to arrive in the evening – and promptly got stuck at the airport. They finally arrived at the hotel at 2 am this morning. Welcome to Malta.

Today my husband had to transport clients from Gozo to a couple of hotels in Malta and to the airport. He needed a police escort, and when he parked the van briefly in front of one of the hotels, a police officer advised him to turn off the engine and pull out the key, as earlier in the day keys had been stolen from waiting minibuses. Windscreens of private transport vehicles were smashed too. Having returned to Gozo, hubby phoned me to let me know that all’s ok. And he, who isn’t exactly what you’d call timid, said he’d been afraid. And obviously now I’ll be afraid too if I know he’s going to Malta again tomorrow.

Who the fuck do these people think they are, to mess around with other people’s lives like that?! They eat up our tax money with subsidies being poured down their throats. But what is far more condemnable is the fact that they are hellbent on endangering not only our livelihood, but theirs too.

Our hotel is spending a lot of money on familiarisation visits and press trips. The Kempinski people, who we are hosting this week, are being given an extensive programme to get to know not so much the hotel but the destination Gozo, hopefully enabling them to sell it better. Although I’m confident that they will like the island, I’m doubtful that their experience will be impressive enough to erase the memory of an airport in turmoil.

There’s a video titled Scuffles outside Castille on the Times of Malta website. The text underneath goes, “The drivers mouthed obscenities at the government and protested that liberalisation policies would ruin them…” How sad that they are too stupid to recognise that they are ruining themselves. They are unable to fathom that nobody is forced to come here for their holiday. And that many of those who have arrived since yesterday, won’t likely be back in a hurry.

Let’s hope that the situation will get resolved without anybody getting really hurt – and that the aftermath will not leave those drivers running around with empty taxis and buses. The Transport Federation last night “thanked its members and non-affiliated organisations for having made its strike a success.” (Quote from The Times of Malta). God, how I hate ignorant people…

This entry was posted on Tuesday, July 15th, 2008 at 6:47 pm and is filed under Gozo & Tourism. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.