Law enforcers swoop on Attard area

A newly put up sign at the entrance to Attard from the Ta' Qali side, near where the APS Bank is, prohibits access "except for rendering a service". Residents have been stopped, fined and warned by wardens standing at this juncture in wait. Misraħ Kola residents have been using this entrance for as long as anyone can remember rather than entering Attard from its edges on the Rabat or Mosta sides.

The shops and other concerns in the road (Pitkali Road) are also upset, for obvious reasons, as this decreases traffic by half and for no justifiable reason that we can decipher. A petition to the Attard local council is circulating about this. Residents, at least, should be exempted.

Recently, residents had signed another petition to the same council and had a meeting complaining about an excess of "traffic policemen" - no fewer than four next to each other - erected in Pitkali Road on the way to Ta' Qali and its corner with Triq il-Gradilja. Reports I heard about this meeting have been less than edifying.

To wit, wardens recently booked a car registered in my name parked in front of the door of my house for being "dusty" and, still more recently, for it being parked in the same place, which this time was deemed to be too close to a corner with a private residential street but where there are no yellow lines.

Not so long ago two traffic policemen had even turned up outside my door and booked me on two counts because our little dog had inadvertently strayed outside the front garden gate. These counts, both of them incorrect, were that it had been taken out without a leash on and that it had dirtied the street without this (a special lens was needed) having being picked up.

When in the 1990s my colleagues and I had led the campaign for wardens to allow councils to be effective, such unreasonable behaviour was not what we had in mind. As for petitions to the Attard local council, as it has been administered for the past decade, experience teaches that they may be less than effective; but perhaps not this time.