Issue link: https://maltatoday.uberflip.com/i/349229
maltatoday, SUNDAY, 20 JULY 2014 13 well, couldn't this also be viewed as a mostly harmless childish prank?... Muscat breaks off to give an indica- tion of the sheer extent of the phe- nomenon. "When you hear of one, two cases, you say, oh well… but then when you start doing house visits, talking to various people and listening to all these stories… they do seem to add up, and you say: this is really bad…" The situation has evidently exas- perated the residents, and a hint of this exasperation comes through even in Muscat's otherwise quiet and composed manner. He reminds me that this sort of nuisance is also an invasion of an otherwise sacrosanct right to live in safety and tranquillity in your own home. "Swieqi is home to us, and quite an expensive area too. Now, you live in your home, your 'home sweet home'… you return home from work to relax, and to at least spend the rest of the day in peace and quiet. When you're living in this area, you're liv- ing in a tense situation. Your ears are open for the noise that's going on outside, just in case anybody does, you know, anything wrong to your property, to your vehicle. I don't think that's a very happy situation…. when you're living in quite an expen- sive area. In fact when you see com- ments on Facebook, you see people say 'I don't know why I'm paying so much rent to live in this area of dis- turbance.'…" And even though some of this of- fensive behaviour has 'language school student' written all over it, Muscat is reluctant to point fingers directly at this particular category of potential trouble-maker. Last April's tyre-slashing episode was a case in point: two suspects were eventu- ally arrested and both were Maltese. But Muscat adds that it would be a mistake to focus only on one type of offender for another reason: this aspect represents only one side of a multi-faceted problem. "The issue is not just with language students, and it's not just with for- eigners either. We would be barking up the wrong tree if we just blamed it on the students. There are Maltese causing problems as well." Nor is it a question of age, as the type of crimes committed seems to suggest. "When I'll be going [to] my radio programme in the morning and I'll be driving out at half six, you see adults returning in quite a state. So it's not a matter of just the young ones, you know. It's mixed, and it's complex. This problem has been go- ing on for many, many years." Noel Muscat does however con- cede that the language school is- sue has contributed, even if unwit- tingly, to the situation. "The vast majority of language schools and residences are concentrated in this area. Sometimes it's not even a case of vandalism or crime. If you have large numbers of youngsters walking through the streets of a quiet neigh- bourhood at 5am, 6am… they will cause a disturbance whether they want to or not. We hear them every night. Even if they're just talking, five or six people walking past your house make enough noise to keep you awake. And this happens seven days a week… That's why for years now we have been asking for a local police station…" Part of the Swieqi civic centre was earmarked as a station several years ago, but these plans were continu- ally shelved owing to a general short- age of police manpower. Matters reached a head in recent months, and the station was finally opened last April… after the latest wave of criminal activity was duly reported in the media. "For us this was a very big step," Muscat points out. "We had long argued that even the presence of uniformed police would make a dif- ference." Having said this, he admits that police presence in the area could be beefed up from the present situation of one, maybe two police officers as- signed to Swieqi. "As things stand, when police pa- trol the streets they have to close the station. But the local council is not asking for more police patrols. There are other ways to deal with the problem. As you know, there is only one entrance into Swieqi [for pedes- trians] – under the Regional Road tunnel. That is where most, if not all the people coming back home or to their cars from Paceville will pass. What we are suggesting is to have a policeman on duty at that point, monitoring groups of people as they walk through, to see if anyone is not in a stable condition…" Such people could be warned by a uniformed policeman that they are entering a residential area, which might prove sufficient deterrent for all but the most criminally-inclined of trouble-makers. If there is need, the policeman can inform the sta- tion that potential troublemakers are coming through. Even so, with the population set to increase, Muscat claims that eventu- ally, more police will have to be as- signed to the area. Meanwhile, residents continue to turn to the local council expecting action over their complaints. Surely, dealing with such issues is in fact part of the broader responsibilities of civic administration. Is there any- thing the local council can do about the situation on its own? "Unfortunately the local council has very limited powers. All we can do is act as a pressure group, in re- ality. All we can do is communicate with the authorities to vent people's concerns. But that's all we can do. I have no authority to allocate po- lice…" Elsewhere, talk of a 'neighbour- hood watch' seems to have fizzled out, though Muscat adds that part of this idea has now become incor- porated into the local council's Face- book page, which has become almost an 'early warning system' for the lo- cality. "Quite a lot of residents are on that page, and inform other residents of what happened on one particular night, and so on and so forth. But complaints are continuous and regu- lar. And things are going to get worse, by the way. Because the population is increasing. Whereas before we knew, for instance, where students were allocated – because there were certain areas which housed students – now, there are whole blocks of flats which are being let out to students. So whereas before… we knew where it was concentrated, which was near the garden view complex, now it's spreading all over the locality. So we know that the control of it is going to become even more difficult." Moving aside from crime and de- linquency, Muscat admits he faces longer-term challenges as mayor of a fast-changing locality. "Swieqi is currently going through its sec- ond phase of construction. The first phase was in the 1960s and 1970s, when the first buildings went up. Now, terraced houses are constantly making way for large blocks of apart- ments. The present population is over 10,000. The local council has had to increase from seven to nine councillors to reflect this growth. We are talking about a substantial increase in a very short time…" Echoing frustrations common to many local councils, Muscat adds that permits for development were being dished out without due con- sideration for the infrastructural challenges such projects invariably cause. "To give one example, in one dead-end street – and there are many dead-end streets in Swieqi – some three or four blocks went up recent- ly. Yet the street is still a dead end. Each block contains 16, 17 apart- ments, and MEPA's policies are for all new residences to provide parking for one car per apartment. Can you imagine how many households only have one car today?" In an ideal scenario, the plans for this particular area should have been to open up the dead end to improve the locality's traffic flow, and to insist on more parking facilities to cope with the increase in traffic volume. Instead, all the previous congestion problems were left not only unsolved, but dramatically exacerbated. Another administrative problem concerns the council's dependence on central government for even the most basic service provision. In some cases – for example, street lighting – this may have a direct bearing on crime rates in the area. "There is one area where the light- ing is particularly poor. It is also one of the areas where tyres were slashed. We need to change the bulbs of the street lamps. Yet when you go to the relevant government departments, you get sent to MEPA, you get told this or that, and in the end it takes three months to get a simple light bulb changed. Or an electricity pole in the middle of the pavement. Do you know how long it took us to get an electricity pole removed? A whole year…" On top of all this, however, Noel Muscat fears that the town he has called home for the past 17 years is still struggling to carve out an iden- tity of its own. It is this lack of iden- tity, he argues, which also impacts the apparent lack of civic pride: if not among residents, at least among people passing through. "Other towns have their own iden- tities, their own character. Mgarr has its agricultural produce, its straw- berry festival; Zebbug is famous for its Good Friday procession; every village has its festa. Swieqi? We don't even have a town square…" The local council's strategy to counter this has been to invest heavi- ly in sport: not just football (in which Swieqi FC has just been promoted to a higher division) but also rugby and handball. Yet Swieqi has no sports facilities of its own outside one or two small gyms. "And there isn't any space, either. To give you an idea of how crowded we have become: when the Forum Hotel was demolished, there were 17 trees to be replanted in the area. Would you believe that we couldn't find room for a single one? In the end we had to give them all to Pem- broke…" Interview Close proximity to Paceville has made Swieqi a hotbed of vandalism and petty crime. But its mayor, Noel Muscat, argues that the locality's problems run much deeper than mere delinquency of an identity TENSE SITUATION When you're living in this area, you're living in a tense situation. Your ears are open for the noise that's going on outside, just in case anybody damages your property, your vehicle SEX IN SWIEQI You get reports of everything: condoms deposited into the letterbox…