Letters • March 7 2004

Lack of walking can seriously damage your health and figure

Marianna Galea Xuereb
Dingli

The National Statistics Office has recently released official statistics that clearly indicate transport as being a major cause of pollution.
So we have finally acquired official statistics to prove what the average, unprofessional man in the street has instinctively known and felt for many years! In any case desperate situations demand drastic measures so may I respectfully appeal to the Authorities to consider the following suggestions:
1. Bring up the legal age for a private driver's license to twenty-five years and make exceptions only for individuals who may need to render a quick public service such as would be the case for a bus driver or private/policlinic's general practitioner
2. Upgrade the bus service to one worthy of the name and, if necessary, subsidise it drastically to encourage people to use it. The money voted for such a purpose will eventually be recuperated in terms of a reduction in the costs incurred by the Public Health Service in treating pollution-related ailments such as lung cancer and asthma.
3. Erect adequate and enough bus shelters. No expensive, non-functional, easily vandalised, aesthetically boring, standardised transparent structures, please. Consider allowing NGO's and ordinary citizens to construct simple, tastefully artistic, functional and original bus shelters out of recycled stone, wood, metal, tough plastic etc., for example.
4. Enforce the ‘no smoking’ ban on buses. Several commuters avoid using buses because of the still existing smoking problem. One can still see certain bus drivers that smoke while on duty.
5. Encourage the use of bicycles and environmentally friendly vehicles. Do away with taxes on standard bicycles. Fund educational and advertising campaigns and enlist the support of popular personalities to promote cycling and walking as healthy and ‘trendy’ if need be. One of the main
reasons that youths (who - like all other age groups - would be much better off financially, aesthetically and health wise if they walked more and drove less) want their own car these days is the fact that car manufacturers target the young with advertisements portraying car owning as ‘sexy.’ We need to break away from this idea and consider the mandatory use of the slogan ‘Warning: Lack of walking can seriously damage your health and figure!’ on all advertising of vehicles that directly or indirectly cause air pollution. I must point out here that even the use of electric vehicles in Malta is not totally environmentally friendly. We will have to continue to generate electricity through the combustion of fossil fuels for God knows how long since solar, wind and wave energy technologies are still far from being viable options as complete alternatives to our present situation.
6. Construct bicycle lanes and secure and sheltered bicycle parking spaces.
7. Give up the luxuriously expensive method of trying to embellish roundabouts with cultivated, decorative plants. As we have all witnessed such plants bloom prettily for only a few months each year and the money, use of artificial chemicals (fertilisers, insecticides, weed killers etc), waste of water and fuel necessary to maintain the pretty, colourful, short lived display is just not justified. It would be more responsible to spend the money to subsidise public transport or maintain basic health and social services. Besides, Mother Nature is quite capable of embellishing the roundabouts effectively and practically on her own. And cheaply too. One need only control the height of the wild plants in order to ensure a safe and clear enough field of view for the drivers. However, if the authorities feel they should interfere further than that, then indigenous, possibly even endemic local plants, should be used, especially those that are threatened with extinction. It may be possible to propagate - in local laboratories such as those owned by the agricultural department - many plants from a single small piece of a rare indigenous plant still growing in the wild, for example.
8. Legislate in favour of flexible work time hours and tele-working wherever possible. Unless a particular worker forms part of a team whose work would be hampered if any one of the team was slightly late, or if one is involved directly with customers, there is no reason why workers should not be able to come in later, or even earlier, than the official time and then make up for it in the evening or leave earlier as the case may be. Many purely administrative workers employed with the parastatal organisation that I know only too well resort to private transport for the simple reason that, incredibly banal and unfair as it may seem, they cannot clock in more than five minutes late without a full quarter of an hour's pay being deducted from their salaries.
Of course, this does not apply to the managerial staff, some of whom enjoy full work time flexibility even to the extent of averaging only about thirty hours per week at their place of work despite being paid a full salary. I respectfully assume that they do more work for the Corporation from home but why should not this possibility be available to ‘lower grade workers’ if efficiency can still be maintained.
I admit that the above suggestions may be considered by some as not exactly ‘vote catching’ and many individuals among the Maltese business community put pressure on politicians to create all kinds of perceived needs for consumable items rather than promote recycling and/or cost cutting measures. However, many Maltese, myself among them, still value a healthy, secure, reasonably comfortable way of life free of unnecessary luxuries, lazy or addictive habits and unjustified taxes. We, so called old-fashioned, thrifty individuals are not interested in keeping up with the Jones or the Northern, abundantly water blessed countries at all costs, joining the rat race, or jumping on the illusionary stylish and affluent bandwagon of what is considered the modern, civilised western world to the detriment of what may be beneficial in our own traditional Maltese way of life. My idea of civilised is living in harmony with each other and our environment. To me being modern translates into being educated enough to make the right choices and challenge traditional ways if (if and only if) they are detrimental rather than just for the sake of it. I would like to remind politicians that there are still quite a few of us ‘conservatives’ around and we too bother to vote whenever any kind of election is held.