Letters: 22nd September 2014

The dirtiest industrial zone in Malta

This is the main entrance to the Mosta Industrial Area, where hundreds of people are employed with the numerous factories which operate there. We have been complaining for years about the dirt and disgusting state that this area is kept in, or rather un-kept.

We have made several complaints with the Local Council, who responded that this area does not fall under their jurisdiction, the health department, who told us they will pass on the complaint, to be quite honest I do not know to whom, Malta Enterprise, whom we had been told, during the previous administration, that the Industrial Zones fall under their remit as well as the Ministry, who are well aware of the terrible state this area is in.

The skip in one of the photos has been there for years. Apparently this has been placed there by one of the factory owners for their own personal use, thus creating a disgusting environment and depriving any person from parking a vehicle in such an area where parking is scarce.

A skip contractor, who happens to have a storage area, dumps several skips outside his own area, full of material, one on top of the other, and these are left lying there for months on end.

The surrounding area has been turned into a junk yard, with the many dumped vehicles thrown all over the place, as well as a rat haven, with numerous large rats roaming around, during the peak of the day and night.

Heavy investments have been made in these factories, which employ a large number of employees and it is shameful and totally unfair for the authorities to leave an industrial area in such a disgusting and unhealthy state.

To add insult to injury, the road leading to our factory is still undone. During the winter, clients, local and overseas suppliers, as well as employees have to pass over mud and puddles to get to our premises, and have to put up with the dust during the summer.

The attached photos should make the people aware of the situation we have to endure, only because the powers that be are not interested.

Richard Pace Bonello, Via email

The Church in Malta is very alive

Father Mark Montebello, O.P. has recently been reported in your paper as foretelling that the Church (presumably in the Maltese Islands) is due to become extinct. Father Mark has thus sounded the trumpet of a prophet of doom.

Of course, his blog contains some holes. It transpires that the “Church” he refers to is the people of the cloth, not the fold who are baptized and believe in Jesus Christ, the Lord. Now he happens to be a clergyman (religious) himself, and so is his brother-in-religion, the present Archbishop of Malta. It is not the community of the faithful, who constitute the Church, whose future looks so bleak to the Dominican priest. In fact, according to him, lay people should take over!

Now, according to Father Montebello, the Church is Malta is not transmitting joy and hope (I presume he refers to the Council document: Gaudium et Spes), nor passing on a message of happiness. Father Montebello would have us believe that (his) Church is moribund. Her days are counted, or so he surmises. The present Pope’s personality and style of guiding the “flock” ooze joy. His written and spoken word is constantly harping on Gospel Joy (Evangelii Gaudium) and the Joy of being merciful and poor with the poor.

My question is about the Church in Malta…and by “Church” here I refer to so many priests and religious, so many “works of mercy” as we used to refer to them in our childhood years and which Pope Benedict XVI, in his first and marvellous Encyclical Letter, “God is Love”, instanced as characteristic activities of Charity-Love.

I should like to single out: Id-Dar tal-Providenza, founded by Dun Mikiel Azzopardi, and still a living monument of hope to so many children, their families, and Maltese society. Mgr Victor Grech, and Caritas Malta, and its sister-branch in Gozo.

The many homes for the elderly run by religious sisters and the Catholic Action, a safe haven for elderly people, the assistance, caring benefits, sustenance offered by the uniting dedication of Mgr Philip Calleja and Father Alfred Vella, and by JRS Malta.

What about Radju Marija, created and directed by the Domincan Friars, and Church schools, the MUSEUM, the Catholic Action, the Cana movement, the Legion of Mary, the male and female religious, whose convents and/or churches are a hive of all sorts of activities, assistance in hospitals and rehabilitation centres, Fr Tagliaferro’s centre in Paceville? All this and much more, besides the many hours priests spend in the confessionals or counselling people, just for philanthropic purposes.

The Church in the Maltese Islands, through the indefatigable dedication, hard work and commitment of many priests and religious, is constantly, nay, continuously contributing to strengthen families, bring peace where it is wanting, inducing and encouraging hope. The generosity of the Maltese and Gozitans is proverbial and shows itself in often church-promoted or church assisted concrete aid for people in distress, marathons and other athletic/sporting activities for charitable purposes. There are then those hidden right hands, unknown to their left counterparts, who following many a churchman, high and low, push their sealed envelopes unobtrusively under many a door…

But perhaps Father Montebello expects and dreams of spectacular gestures of hope and manifestations of joy on the part of the ministerial Church, which could and despite my present ignorance do feature from time to time on the foundations of such Gospel joy, of which the various instances hinted at above are proof positive.

I should like to end by pointing out so many groups of voluntary workers at home and abroad who are the order of the day and whose one aim is to spread the “joy and hope” they have received from “the Church” and for which they are ever so grateful.

I am positive that Father Mark loves the Church that is in Malta, and that his somewhat imprudent and slapdash remarks about the Church are not ill meant. Dear Father Mark, as a former teacher of yours, allow me to suggest you show a fellow brother of your Order your writings before publicizing them.

Fr Charles Delia, Via email

The Hardy Scots? Hardly

The time-worn image of the hardy Scot who never took anything lying down, for Braveheart lived in each and every one, and the spirit of the nation wasn’t necessarily the bottled variety, took a battering last Thursday, when for all his bravado Jock told the world that it just wasn’t in him to cut adrift from Mama’s apron strings in Whitehall.

No one is suggesting that Jock is a chicken, for he belongs to a large flock of sheep, a flock of ewes to be precise. Maybe his penchant for haggis has something to do with it.

If his culinary predilections leave little to be said for, his dress sense is a gobstopper.

Could it be the case that men who slip into skirts, or whatever they call them – for a skirt is a skirt by any other name – must have very little to hide and a lot less to protect?

Doesn’t Jock need a jockstrap?

Is that why Jock in a skirt is never out of kilter?

John Genovese, Birkirkara