When I first caught sight of a female traffic warden clad in tight- fitting brown trouser suit and rakish peaked hat, I was most impressed.

Such people did not exist 30 years ago, when I last lived in Malta. Progress, I thought, and, with it, a newly disciplined type of Maltese motorist.

Sadly, I have been obliged to review my initial favourable opinion. The wardens themselves are really pleasant, obliging and friendly, but not so the irrational and unreasonable rules by which they are obliged to abide! There are a number of instances on which I shall quote chapter and verse. A recent misadventure really does take the biscuit!

On leaving a restaurant in Spinola Road, St Julian`s, my dinner companion drove up to the junction with St Julian`s Hill and turned right, as one was accustomed to do with impunity in the past. Suddenly, out of the darkness, emerged a brown-clad traffic warden, complete with motorcycle helmet, who proceeded to book my friend for ignoring two so-called traffic signs.

These small, unobtrusive unlit signs are almost invisible to the motorist travelling along these roads for the first time. Indeed, a local estate agent informed me that these particular signs only mushroomed suddenly about three weeks before. So, to those accustomed for many years to the fact that a right turn is permissible, these signs are difinitely not prominently, clearly and brightly displayed - quite the reverse.

If one knew that no right turn is allowed at this junction (why not? the logical motorist asks oneself) then one need not peer into the darkness of the badly lit streets to see whether or not a right turn is allowed. This is a Catch-22 situation!

Another bad experience concerning traffic wardens occurred a few weeks ago. A friend parked outside the Tower Stores Supermarket, Sliema, in a road unmarked by yellow signs or, as in England, with "Parking Restricted" clearly printed on highly legible steel notices.

There is an unobtrusive "No Stopping" sign almost hidden by a building site but, as my friend was a visitor to the island and unfamiliar with this particular sign, he parked his motor car on the half-pavement for exactly eight minutes.

On his return, a female warden had given him a parking ticket for parking on the pavement. In the UK a traffic warden would walk around an incorrectly parked vehicle and, if the driver returned within a few minutes, one would be let off with a warning. Would it be possible for traffic wardens in Malta to practise such tolerance too?

The role of the traffic warden here seems particularly arduous; not only do they have to bear the brunt of the hundreds of irate motorists who are booked regularly and remorselessly but they appear to work tremendously long hours and cover relatively vast areas packed with parking restrictions.

Is it time, one wonders, for a traffic Ombudsman to be appointed with a brief whereby a system of fairness is introduced, where clarity and the law are at one?