Editorial • 20 July 2003

The necessity of change

There is only one thing we can be one hundred percent sure of: change. So goes the adage, and the view is concurred by eastern philosophers and sub atomic physicists alike.

The vote for EU membership was the biggest recent indication that the Maltese want change.

Remaining outside the EU would have kept Malta hobbling along at a similar pace to what we have been used to over the past decades, certainly no cause for celebration.

With EU membership, if our administrators are not going to be transparent and accountable, they now have some targets to reach. A case in point is waste management, often spoken about as a high priority, but in fact an issue that has been left on the backburner.

The EU will not revolutionise our lives overnight, but it will do so slowly, almost unnoticeably.

What we as citizens have to recognise is that we must be open to change. We have spent too long accepting that things can be done the Maltese way, accepting amateurism, lateness, shoddiness and mediocrity. Our standards have to improve. We have to aim for quality, that elusive quantum leap that makes the difference between good and bad food, art, aesthetics, taste – in short everything that improves our quality of life.

Our leaders should be the ones setting the standards. From them we expect professionalism and a commitment to the highest standards.

We have seen an attempt to build roads that will last and, while the construction phase is a nightmare for anyone living in the vicinity, it is a step in the right direction.

We have seen an attempt to make government departments more user friendly and it is possible now, for example, to apply for VAT over the internet. But too many departments, including the income tax one, want to see your face to solve even the slightest problem.

Each government departments should be able to offer a user-friendly service that will mean less and less wasted time for the public and make nightmare visits to collect a parcel from the post office, for example, a thing of the past.

It is not only the public sector that needs a good shaking up, the service in some of our hotels and restaurants remains embarrassing to say the least.

Malta needs to take the best from Europe and adopt and change to achieve those standards that now we can only dream of. This can only be achieved with a high level of training, and an investment in human resources.

We must be ready, more than anything else to accept change, different ways of doing things, innovation and competition. A quantum jump of our mental set is necessary and it will only happen if our societal leaders, including the Church also show that they are ready to accept the challenges of the future.