Sliema council's inaction on illegally parked cars

Sliema council has been informed several times by various individuals in the past 15 months that at the very beginning of Manuel Dimech Street, Sliema (going down to Balluta), one or two cars are always illegally parked on the pavement.

Yet the council has so far done nothing about this. This is obviously of great inconvenience to pedestrians, especially elderly people, because one cannot walk on the pavement if a car is parked there and one has to walk in the middle of the road. And what about a woman pushing a pram?

Yet the local council has ignored this problem and seems not to care about the inconvenience caused.

The council was asked to put up one to two bollards in the area, but according to them, "bollards are dangerous and against the law".

So if bollards are dangerous and illegal, what about cars parked on the pavement? Are they not more dangerous and against the law? How can people walk on the pavement if cars are parked there? It seems to me that the Sliema council has no intention to solve the problem. In fact their attitude to the parking problem is weak indeed; for instance, car space lines are only repainted after they are completely obliterated.

As regards the temporary 'no parking' stickers the council provides residents who need to carry out repairs or other works on the façades of their houses with the date and time written with thick black marker by some council employee, are barely legible. It is important that these are written clearly, so that motorists can remove their cars at the appropriate time.

Sliema council also fails when it comes to keeping the streets free of litter. What is it doing to stop people from littering the street? Obviously, its refuse collection methods are not working, because Sliema is far from tidy.