Issue link: https://maltatoday.uberflip.com/i/1178032
19 LETTERS & EDITORIAL maltatoday | SUNDAY • 20 OCTOBER 2019 Mikiel Galea Letters & Clarifications BOV customer care I do not know what the thousands of other Bank of Valletta customers think about the customer care by telephone service which BOV provides. In this day and age everyone is com- mitted during the day. More frequently than ever before, people are attending to their daily chores more after the hours of work than during the day. Commer- cial banks support this social trend with their ATMs and Internet Banking. In- deed, they do their utmost to discourage branch visits by customers. It stands to reason in such a scenar- io that Bank of Valletta should at least compensate for diminishing service by providing a much better telephone service than it had done traditionally. Instead, what the customer is faced with is a telephone service which is worse than if it is not there at all. I and many other customers feel in- sulted. Let us for the sake of the argument leave aside the impossibility of getting through to a branch by phone, worse still, the BOV Customer Care by phone treat us customers as imbeciles! The moment you ring 21312020, there goes the automatic answering machine which immediately gives you a rose of what to expect "all lines are busy", without any hope of knowing if everyone is on tenterhooks at cus- tomer care answering an uncontrolled number of calls or simply dosing off the day. BOV Customer Care does not take care of the customer. The bank should change tack and take a leaf out of the government's 153 excellent service. With all its defects, our civil service reacts to the unfair criticism it receives by providing an excellent service to the general public. Anyone in doubt should try it. Compared to this, Bank of Valletta should be ashamed of itself. Mario Galea, Qormi Gospels not merely propaganda JOHN Guillaumier (Letters, 13th Oc- tober, 2019) persists in believing that the gospels were merely religious prop- aganda, hopelessly and idolatrically tainted by overactive imaginations and evangelistic zeal. However, my reading and perusal of suitable good books by foremost Chris- tian authors and authorities have built a convincing case that reflects eyewit- ness testimony and also bears the un- mistakable earmarks of accuracy. So early are these biographies that they cannot be explained away as legendary invention. In fact, the fun- damental beliefs in Jesus' prodigious miracles, resurrection and deity go way back to the very dawning of the Christian movement up to the present time. As the sun shines more brightly when emerging from the dark clouds, likewise the Church's holiness will be more resplendent in times of turmoil and vices. Take Jesus' word. John Azzopardi, Zabbar Dolmen garden IN the past, there used to be a public garden which formed part of a condi- tion tied to the development of the Dolmen Hotel. In recent years, this public garden has disappeared. Is the disappearance of the public garden temporary or forever? George Calleja, Attard Clarification: Zurrieq PC WITH reference to your article entitled 'Minister who extended building zones works for client eyeing Zurrieq farmland' (13 October, 2019), no planning control application was submitted by architect George Pullicino on behalf of James Barbara, owner of James Caterers. Contrary to the impression that your article and its headline convey, in 2006 when the development zones were changed, the applicant did not own the land referred to. The land to which your article refers is moreover owned by a number of different owners. Ian Stafrace, SalibaStafrace Legal Editorial note: MaltaToday understands that the newspaper made incorrect reference to James Barbara's namesake of said James Caterers company, who also happens to be a client of architect George Pullicino. The error is regretted: the client involved in the Zurrieq planning control application is not Mr Barbara of James Caterers, but another James Barbara.