Letters | Sunday, 30 November 2008

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Petitions against wardens’ citations

I refer to the article that appeared on your paper on Sunday 16 November 2008 entitled “Wardens found in the wrong in 57% of cases”.
The Petitions Board offers a redress to aggrieved citizens who wish to appeal notices of contravention issued with respect to those areas that were devolved to local councils, namely citations issued by the enforcement services as a whole. These include the local wardens, the police, enforcement officers of the Transport Authority (ADT), the Education Department and enforcement officers of the Malta Environment and Planning Authority (MEPA). The figure of 16,854 citations processed by the Petitions Board represents just 1.2% of all the citations issued by the enforcement services since 2006; a total of over 1,404,500 citations. So it would be more correct to state that 9,560 citations that were revoked amounts to 0.68% of the total of over 1.4 million citations issued by all enforcement services.

Natalino Attard
Director, Local Government
Valletta

Editorial note
The article in question simply states that wardens were found in the wrong in 57% of cases processed by the Petitions Board since 2006. In fact wardens were found in the wrong in 9,560 out 16,854 cases on which the petitions board has taken a decision. This truth is not disputed by the Director of Local Government. It does not make sense to say that the board has revoked only 0.68% of the total of over 1.4 million citations issued because the board only had the chance to deliberate on 16,584 cases. Since the publication of the story, MaltaToday has received a number of queries from citizens who did not appeal to the board simply because they did not know of its existence.

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