After a court deemed residential parking schemes discriminatory and beyond the powers of local councils to enforce, thousands of motorists were still fined for occupying resident-reserved parking spaces or for staying longer than the time prescribed to non-residents.
In January last year, a civil court presided over by Justice Lino Farrugia Sacco decided that the Pieta’ Local Council was discriminating against Maltese citizens residing in other parts of the island when it put into force a residential parking scheme. On these grounds, the court nullified a fine issued against a motorist contesting a contravention brought against her.
Despite this decision, neither the Pieta’ Local Council nor many others desisted from booking motorists for parking in spaces reserved for residents, issuing a total of 16,273 fines related to the offence in 2007 alone.
In the same year, Pieta’ itself issued no fewer than 2,029 fines to motorists for any of the following offences: parking for a period exceeding the restrictive prescribed time; having an incorrect parking time indicated on the parking disc; not displaying the parking disc or valid permit; parking in a controlled zone; returning to park a non-permitted vehicle in the same controlled zone within the stay-away period.
For the same reasons, wardens issued a total of 6,011 fines in the St Julian’s area and 3,025 in Victoria.
In Attard, on the other hand, only two fines were issued in 2007 to motorists parking in zones falling under residential schemes, while it is understood that these fines were issued in the days before the court ruling.
In fact, residents of a narrow cul-de-sac located very close to an independent school in Attard, recently asked the Transport Authority (ADT) to clarify whether their street is still designated as a “residents only access” area, in view of the fact that some of the signs indicating this designation had been removed while some others were still in place. The residents pointed out that they had been facing a “daily struggle with hundreds of cars entering this narrow street every day to pick up children after school”, urging the authority to resolve the issue.
“This amount of cars in a small and narrow street such as ours is not just a big inconvenience to residents, but also a serious health hazard due to all the fumes released from the cars,” the letter read. “Ultimately however, the best solution would be to assign the only 5-6 parking spaces available in the area as ‘residents only parking’ between 12:00 and 14:00.”
Within a few days, the ADT replied to inform the complainants that: “Residents Only Parking and Access for Residents Only are not approved by the Traffic Management Unit since these are discriminatory.”

ddarmanin@mediatoday.com.mt