Wardens being pressured to issue bookings, GWU says

The General Workers' Union said that once again a number of member local wardens have complained that they were being pressured to issue bookings for contraventions before they went out on their beats.

It repeated its directives to wardens to ignore any quotas that might be imposed on them and called on Austin Gatt, Minister for Local Government to investigate the claims and insist that no quotas should be imposed.

In a statement, the GWU said wardens reported they were being warned that if they did not reach the desired quota they risked being transferred.

Karmenu Vella, secretary of the union's Services and Media Section, who is investigating the complaints, said if it resulted that quotas were being imposed on wardens, the GWU would publicly expose those responsible and take steps against them according to law.

Mr Vella stressed that the GWU did not have any dispute with the two companies employing local wardens. He said these two companies had never imposed any quotas on wardens.

Mr Vella said that according to law, only local wardens were authorised to book people for contraventions and no one else had any authority to insist on quotas of bookings to be issued daily or per hour.

He also pointed out that following a meeting on the issue in December 2002, the minister had issued a public statement emphasising that while the government's policy had to be firmly enforced, there should be no quotas that assumed beforehand that the law would be broken.