The publication of the names of the eight companies or consortia that responded to a call for expression of interest in running a public transport system in Malta for ten years left me left me bewildered. I could not believe my eyes when I read that the CVA Technology Company Limited was one of the bidders!
Let me explain. I read and this is a fact that one of the bidders is Transdev Plus Consortium, and that this consortium is made up of CVA Technology company Limited (operators of the Valletta vehicle access system) as one of the parties. CVA acts on behalf of ADT in collecting the parking fees of all of us who park in Valletta. How can this be possible, I ask?
We were told that the call was issued by the ministry and the Transport Authority as part of the reform of public transport system. But the Transport Authority has a finger in the CVA Technology Company Limited: CVA operates on behalf of ADT, the CVA contestation form states that it should be addressed to the ADT c/o CVA Technology Limited; the login user form states that CVA operated on behalf of ADT.
So how is it possible that the CVA be allowed to form part of this consortium?
As far as I know, nothing has improved thanks to CVA – it is just getting rich at our expense, collecting the car space it “rents us” in Valletta, and reverting a percentage of its revenue to the ADT.
But CVA is not an ordinary commercial company: it did not make money and is not making money by doing business, only by collecting unjust taxes from us. I’d prefer such taxes to go straight to the national coffers, but I cannot understand how a couple of handsome guys, whose only qualification is that of being in the government’s good books, can be allowed to do business when their reason for being there is to collect taxes on behalf of ADT.
I do not know what is happening in the tender process, but I do know is that despite having been promised more transparency in the tendering process thanks to EU membership, with public procurement regulations line with Brussels, still we allow companies with blatant conflicts of interest like the CVA to participate in a tender issued by the same ministry and the same authority who endorsed it.
Public procurement regulators are familiar with the bidders and with the Ministry and the authority issuing the tender, and they must know that no bidder can have a conflict of interest.
In fact the objectives of the company do not allow the CVA to apply for the tender in question. Its objectives, according to the Memorandum of Association, are the following:
“To design, develop, implement, commission, test, maintain, support, install and operate vehicular access systems for defined charging zones, capable of accurately identifying vehicles which enter or exit choseb access points, storing photographic images of and data on such vehicles and computing and charging such access to the registered owner of the vehicle and to research and develop related technology.”
This means that their own statute does not permit statute to tender for the running of the public transport system in Malta.
This brings me to the question if whether the tender extends also to the island of Gozo, because the papers said nothing in this regards. As you know, the public transport in Malta and that in Gozo are run by different associations, and Malta cannot have two systems of transport. We know that transport in Gozo has its own laws: a case in point is the inadmissibility of the Karta Anzjan on the Gozo buses; something that the ADT is well aware of but has never had the guts to address this issue and stop the abuse.
So I expect the ministry to state from the outset what plans it has for Malta and Gozo regarding public transport.
I went to Lapsi a few weeks ago and I started a conversation with a bus owner and his wife who told me how disappointed they are at the way the Ministry is treating them, though they have always voted Nationalist. They told me that the Association was informed that the government intends to raise the fare to €2, that the government expects them to leave their buses idle and to accept the compensation of LM35,000 per bus and just shut up.
They obviously cannot understand how they were ordered to invest in new buses at LM60,000 each, and now the same people are telling them to put the bus in the garage and accept the sum of LM35,000 as compensation.
The couple told me that they only have one bus, but there are others who invested in 10, and even 15 buses with a capital of Lm900,000 and now they are being told to leave their buses idle in the garage and accept compensation.
Strange but true: this is what the association informed them, and all the bus owners are in a position where they do not know their future. Strange also, how the government subsidised such buses from our taxes, and now these buses are already obsolete!
But going back to the subject, who are the persons involved in the CVA Technology Company Limited?
The company was registered on 3 July 2006 and the shareholders are Pater Holding Company Limited (owned by Fiat group), Dakar Enterprises Limited of B’Kara road St Julian’s, Genesis (UK) Ltd and Charonite Company Limited of Birzebbuga.
The registered office of CVA was the Fiat office in Birkirkara.
On 27 March 2009 Genesis UK transferred all its shares to Anfra Company Ltd of 192 Old Bakery Street Valletta, to Dakar Enterprises Ltd of Dakar Buildings Top Floor B’kara Road St Julian’s, and Charonite Co Ltd of Suite A, Block A, Dolphin Court, Embassy Way, Ta’ Xbiex.
On 21 July 2009, Brian Joseph Gatt was appointed as director and legal and judicial representative of CVA Company Limited. The same Brian Joseph Gatt is a director of Anfra Company Limited (one the shareholders of CVA) together with Francesca Grech.
When the government introduced CVA, we were promised a better parking scheme for Valletta and less traffic, but what it did was remove a source of income from the state coffers and give it to the private sector at a nominal fee. We are still kept in the dark as to how much CVA gives to the ADT from the monies collected from our pockets.
One last point: the website of CVA is cva.gov.mt – a government domain name!
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