This time last year, 80 people died in the span of just ten days as a result of excess heat stress caused by a major heatwave.
This year, we are facing a similar scenario. Just last week, superintendent for public health Charmaine Gauci issued severe public warnings. Last Tuesday, the heat stress index reached 41°C, according to Times of Malta’s report noting Gauci’s comments.
Incredulously, Gauci also advised care homes to purchase power generators to ensure they are covered if the electricity grid falters. Unless I missed something from the reporting about Gauci’s statements, the superintendent for public health did not criticise the energy ministry for its disastrous lack of investment in the country’s electricity distribution cables, even though this fact was ascertained by the National Audit Office.
Instead, the country’s foremost public health authority simply told private operators to kindly sort it out themselves. I shudder to think of what Gauci would tell someone who cannot afford the luxury of a back-up generator. Why don’t we tell unhoused individuals to build their own electricity grid while we’re at it?
Just this week, I saw an old friend in Valletta who’s been on and off the streets for years. Though I’ve seen this man in various states of delirium, I had never seen the despair I saw on his face this week. I could see where the sun had started burning his skin. He was sweating profusely and seemed severely dehydrated.
All I could do was share whatever cash I had on me with him, point him in the direction of people who are willing and able to provide shelter, and hope I won’t be reading his name in a trashy article sensationalising his untimely death anytime soon.
How long are we going to allow this kind of suffering to exist? How much is it going to take to make us all collectively snap out of our reverie? What will it take to make us understand that as long as some of us aren’t free, none of us are free?
My friend’s situation is certainly not the norm. But if you wish to truly understand a society’s priorities, you must first look at how the worst-off are treated.
The fact is that even if you do have a place to live in, a steady job, and a comfortable safety net in the form of family and friends who support you in times of need, you are probably not faring too well either. In fact, I’m willing to bet you’re barely making it to the end of the month.
The power cuts are just a fraction of it. Let’s do a quick roll call of the broader remit of every ministry, just to really paint the bigger picture with as much detail as possible.
Prime minister Robert Abela has proven to be ineffective at pretty much everything, from leading his party’s electoral campaign to managing his own Cabinet to as much as at least showing a basic amount of human decency. The country lacks any kind of strategic, long-term economic vision and national debt has been in free-fall for years.
Public land continues to be gobbled up by unruly developers who do not face real consequences for the illegalities they commit. Our police force is in ruins and our employment sector is rife with abuse. Housing costs are through the roof and our country is heaving with angry, unhappy people who feel like they’re living in a chicken coop.
Justice is timid with the strong and furious with the weak. Our health sector is about to crack. Our educational sector is subject to dangerously high levels of dissatisfaction and burnout among educators. Just getting from point A to point B in an island that stretches 30 kilometres at best is difficult and stressful. Our natural environment is in a pitiful state and our national heritage is all but being destroyed. The agriculture and fishing industries were decimated by rampant black market activity and policies designed to favour big businesses and wealthy speculators.
Not even the sacred cow of social welfare was spared from the slaughter. Government insiders turned the social benefits system inside out. Gozo is basically Clint Camilleri’s loyal fiefdom and a hub for some of the worst developers on the island. And last but not least, our tourism minister’s idiocy is of such biblical proportions that he made the one mistake all of them should have learned to avoid by now: go toe-to-toe with The Shift about an FOI request.
As you lay in bed at night in a puddle of your own sweat, remember that it’s not just the electricity distribution grid that fell apart over the past few years – it’s everything.
As you watch your elderly loved ones suffer amid increasingly harsh heatwaves, remember that your government has no fucking idea as to what would need to be done to help them (or anyone else) survive the climate crisis.
We are in this situation because we failed to stop it. Though there were many of us who fought back with everything we had, though it makes me bitter just thinking about it – it is useless to tell ourselves otherwise. After all these years of torment at the hands of wicked individuals who promised a wonderland but then just pillaged the country instead, we are still lumped with them, in spite of our best efforts.
Which leads me to the question heading this article: really, just what is it going to take to make us hit the streets again?
Does the prime minister need to be filmed slapping an altar boy with all his might for this country to experience real outrage?
Feeling like we’re being boiled alive while the power grid falters should be enough, though it seems like we will need to actually step into the boiling pot to get it.
Wake up, dear slumbering nation, for I fear you do not have much time left.
Well said. This country still has a colonial mentality as well as being tribal to the point of self-destruction. It will take a major event of seismic proportions to rouse it from its torpor…