Saints and traffic
It has already been published in the latest edition of the Government Gazette but since very few people read it and its small print, and even fewer delve into it, the first inkling many will have that something is amiss will be on Friday, 21 July when cars returning from Paceville and the north of the island will find that they cannot continue driving along the Regional Road and will have to get out at the skate park. The same will happen on Saturday and Sunday.
The reason? Msida will be celebrating its feast on those days and they need to close off the Regional Road so as to let fireworks off. The same will happen a week or so later when it is the turn of Santa Venera to celebrate its feast and they need to block the Regional Road so as to let off fireworks.
It’s incredible, but true. It happens every year, we all get hot under the collar, especially people on their way to
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an event or tourists on their way to the airport, but then it passes and everything reverts back to normal.
To say it’s always like this is not true, either. There were a couple of years under the Nationalist Government when a minister stuck his head out and banned the charade of blocking the country’s main arterial road to allow some festa enthusiasts to let off fireworks. They then let off the fireworks on the bastions at Sa Maison, which may not have been the right thing to do either. Nobody seems to question this arrogant inconveniencing of people, year after year. After all, the eternally patient Maltese driver has been more than enough inconvenienced by the works at the Kappara Junction for the past year and a half, especially in recent days, with three lanes becoming one, with huge queues in the blazing sun. But that is for a worthy cause. Blocking the road for a festa is not a worthy cause.
This leader must not give the impression we are against the Msida festa. On the contrary, we appreciate the way the street in front of the church is decorated, with garlands and decorations everywhere. But there is absolutely no need for the kind of fireworks that need to block a road to be let off. In fact, there are many parishes where it is not possible to let off this kind of fireworks. And there are today different kinds of fireworks which do not require a road to be blocked to be let off.
One appreciates the difficulties in which Msida finds itself when it ceases from its daily chore of dealing with such a heavy load of traffic and instead finds it can do nothing which somehow does not impede the flow of traffic. Some might argue it’s only for a couple of hours on three days. But that’s not the point. It’s the principle that is important: should a town or village feast take precedence over the main thoroughfare of a country?