Yesterday, Newsbook reported that a number of drivers and vehicles for hire for the carriage of passengers gathered at Pembroke Park and Ride to protest against new rules that are expected to increase their costs and make it more difficult to operate.
The protest, which was organized by a group of vehicle owners but not supported by unions that represent them, took place after drivers began to be asked to have a commercial garage where they park their vehicles when they are not using them. Before this law began to be enforced, these operators were using normal garages to park their vehicles. However, in the last few days,Transport Malta started demanding that the garages be commercial and refused to issue or extend permits to these owners.
The media portal added that the drivers are protesting against the enforcement of the law suddenly, without consultation. So much so that some had just bought a garage specifically to keep their vehicles, or are still going with the convention, when suddenly they discovered that this garage is not enough.
I am not going to go into the merits of this newly imposed regulation. However, what Newsbook should have asked and done some investigation into is how many y-plate permits Transport Malta issued without the applicants having a garage in the first place.
I am stating so because, according to information that this site has received from an employee of a local insurance company that issues Y-plate policies, they have numerous cases where permits had only a residence address and not a garage address. This employee informed this site that the insurance company issues a minimum of thirty y-plate policies weekly, which is quite a lot. The expression used by the employee was “bħal pastizzi noħorġuhom il-poloz fil-ġimgħa.” The information also included the fact that many of those policies belong to foreigners who came to Malta through illegal migration. In addition, the additional drivers that get employed to also drive the cars are also foreigners who came to Malta via illegal migration.
How are many drivers bypassing this regulation that, in order to have a y-plate car, you must first and foremost have a garage?
Why isn’t this industry regulated properly by also limiting the number of such cars on our small island, especially when it is becoming a detriment to the honest Maltese drivers who have everything that is stipulated in the regulations in order?
We would like to thank the government for its migration policies and for the liberal economy.
Is this industry beneficial for Maltese workers? No. Yet, we thank the government for its migration policies and liberal economy.
Is this industry helping the Maltese nation? Definitely no, because of the lack of parking spaces and the additional traffic it procures. Yet, we thank the government for the liberal economy.
Besides, it does not take some kind of mathematical knowledge to count the numerous y-plates that one sees parked on the street at night. Even some parks and rides get full of them.
And to keep on turning the Maltese islanders into a pack of sardines, this industry has suffocated this island further because it has bloomed without control in the last two years.
While I feel sorry and send my support to all those drivers for hire for the carriage of passengers who abide by the law and do everything according to regulations and processing procedures, I would like to ask Transport Malta how many permits were issued without applicants (of whom the majority are foreigners) having been given the permit without having a garage to start with.