Transport ministry clarifies car park reform

The Labour Party is "intrinsically opposed to private enterprise," the Transport Ministry said in a statement issued today.

The Opposition was also accused of exploiting the political timing of the car park privitisation tender. The ministry said Labour and its allies have a common cause; targeting the Transport Minister Austin Gatt.

 "This ideological controversy is not surprising because the Labour Party remains ingrained in the belief that the state should be and control everything," the transport ministry said.

While claiming that the government wants to regulate the tariffs of privately run car parks, the ministry accused Labour of wanting to decide the tarrifs and at the same time hit out at the Labour-led Hamrun local council for not regulating the tariffs.

The ministry issued a statement explaining the "facts" behind its decision to issue a tender for the management of public car parks and insisted that the decision was taken at Cabinet level.

The tender was initially issued by government two weeks ago, however following the Opposition's Parliamentary motion demanding the repeal of the process, the government suspended the call and has since then been the cause of Parliamentary unrest. 

The statement says that the initiative did not originate solely from Transport Malta "but was approved by the Cabinet because it conforms with the government's policy."

The ministry pointed out that "this is not a privitisation process," as the car parks are already operated privately and have been so for years. The statement also stressed that the government had the right to terminate current agreements and kick parkers out at its own discretion.

It described this state of affairs as "unjust" and explained that the government wanted to introduce management contracts which however "do not change the private nature of the service."

The transport ministry also underlined the fact that the car parks in question were already privately administered but to this day unregulated.

The statement also accuses the Labour Party of promoting the "nationalisation" of public car parks.

The Opposition is also lambasted for opposing the tender for the management of car parks which are already privately run, the improvement of the car parks' infrastructure and the end of precarious employment of car park attendants.

Austin Gatt's ministry said Labour is against private enterprise and "wants government to control the prices and not the free market."

The ministry also pointed out that Labour had never objected to the privitisation of car parks by Labour-led local councils such as that in Hamrun. It noted that the process was undertaken without any consultation and did not protect the rights of the residents by fixing the tariffs.

"What the Labour-led Hamrun local council has done is acceptable for Labour and its allies, but what government is doing is not," the ministry said.