Swieqi local council addresses security issues in the area

Swieqi Mayor Noel Muscat explained that since the locality is so close to Paceville and there is a high occurrence of foreign students in the area particularly in the summer months, issues of vandalism and security have topped the list of concerns for residents for a considerable period of time now.

“Throughout these three years of service, we have addressed these issues head on and done our best to answer residents’ concerns through the instalment of a police station right beside the local council.”

Muscat explained that the council was now in talks to extend the hours of service of the station, with an ultimate aim of making it a 24-hour service.

During a press conference outside the Swieqi Civic Centre earlier today, shadow finance minister Mario de Marco said that Swieqi was an ever-growing locality facing unique problems.

“There are around 10,000 people living in this locality, and the current council has worked very hard to answer the needs of residents,” de Marco said.

He explained how the civic centre which had been opened by the current local council offered various lessons including Zumba and aerobics as well as children’s classes.

“The council has various ideas to increase and improve services like reading lessons, ID card services and many others,” he added, stressing that this local council is a clear example of how a council can cooperate successfully with the community it serves.

De Marco pointed out that the council is currently made up of nine members, with seven being nationalist councillors and the other two being labour councillors.

“The nationalist party has twelve candidates for the upcoming elections, five of whom are currently in council, while the other seven are all newcomers to the sector.”

“All candidates have a vision to strategically face the most pertinent problems of the community like security issues and the condition of the roads,” de Marco explained.

Nationalist spokesperson for local government youth and sports, David Agius praised the work of the local council particularly over the last few months.

“This local council has worked very hard to give the locality a different identity from others,” Agius said listing the creation of a national conference on a specific subject as a particular achievement.

“This year, the subject in discussion was drugs, and I hope that this will be something that will start taking place on a regular basis,” he explained.

Agius then went on to list the efforts made by the local council to engage young people in local activities as much as possible through events like Swieqi fest,  a 5km run around the area and the creation of various official sports teams including rugby, football and others.

“The party would like to encourage young people to exert their right to vote during the upcoming local council elections,” Agius said, adding that the nationalist party had immediately agreed with the idea of sixteen year olds having the right to vote.

Muscat said that during its three-year term, the local council had worked very hard to introduce as many services as possible, like social services offered at the civic centre every Thursday and the provision of free flu vaccination for residents.

“One of the main challenges we still need to face is the situation of the roads,” Muscat explained, citing lack of funds as a drawback in this issue.

“Although road maintenance is said to be the responsibility of local councils, we very rarely have enough funds to deal with these problems adequately,” Muscat said.

He explained that the council had carried out the re-paving of Triq il-Qasam and other roads thanks to local council funds and funds given by the previous government, but that there were still a lot of roads that needed to be dealt with.

“With a budget of €540,000, the council decided to prioritise other services, and there was hardly enough capital left for road maintenance,” Muscat explained, saying that works on a heavily damaged road (triq il-keffa) could not start as it would present a cost of around €400,000 on its own.

Muscat said the council had helped the community as best as it could and that it was also in talks to open a post office near the police station in response to resident’s wishes.

“We believe that we can make a change for the better, and the results this council has achieved over these three years are proof that this is indeed true,” de Marco stressed.