Man plans legal action on parking schemes

A man who contested a parking ticket in Pietà and obtained a court judgment saying that residents' parking schemes are discriminatory is preparing to take his fight on a national scale.

Joseph P. Borg has roped in lawyer Tonio Azzopardi, who has fought many constitutional battles, and plans to oppose in court a number of parking schemes that have been approved by the Malta Transport Authority for several localities.

He will argue that the schemes discriminate between citizens who pay their road tax to the same authority.

Mr Borg said he will be drawing up a petition to gain moral support from people over the court case and called on other citizens to join him.

He described the residents' parking schemes as "obscene discrimination".

"Now that the Transport Authority has sanctioned the provision of Residents' Parking Schemes in several localities I shall take action against this authority on the basis of its own subscribers from different localities," said Mr Borg.

The sanctioning he refers to is actually a legal notice issued by the government effectively empowering local councils to implement the schemes.

In Sliema, where the scheme there has turned out to be the most controversial, this may translate into 50 per cent of parking spaces being put aside for residents in about half the town's streets.

And in the latest development, mayor Nikki Dimech has said that the council now plans to eventually introduce residents' parking in the entire locality.

In 2007, Judge Lino Farrugia Sacco had upheld Mr Borg's case that councils had no legal remit to implement such parking schemes on their own initiative.

In fact, the government's legal notice came in response to this part of the judgment.

A full list of the localities was published where councils have the permission of the ADT to implement a parking scheme for residents.

As a result, hundreds of roads across 19 towns and villages in Malta and Gozo are allowed to have parking restrictions that give preference to residents of that locality.

But Mr Borg insists this move ignores the part in which the judge described the practice as discriminatory.

The judge had said that the creation of reserved parking zones could be justified as a security measure, or on humanitarian grounds, but in this case the Pietà council had given an advantage to its residents over the interests of other citizens of the country.

The law did not give local councils the power to discriminate between residents and non-residents, especially in view of the fact that people who paid the same road tax were entitled to the same rights, the judge had ruled.

Mr Borg pointed out that in major European countries where residents' parking schemes exist, residents paid the city council an extra tax to be able to have preferential treatment with regard to parking.

"Half-baked" solutions to the parking problem like the residents' parking highlighted "the egoistic nature of those who favour these schemes introduced by local councils," he insisted.

He went on to argue that people who own a garage and do not make use of it for their car should be penalised, stressing that this was one of the main contributors to parking problems.