Valletta works: GRTU wants compensation, hints at non-payment of licences

The GRTU said today that it was asking for compensation for Valletta shop owners owing to infrastructural works in the city and loss of parking spaces.

Sections of South Street, Melita Street and other streets are currently closed for paving works while Freedom Square is closed for the City Gate project.

"Despite of all the rules and regulations that prohibit construction works in peak tourism months, dust and construction equipment is all over the place and it seems that Ministers Austin Gatt and George Pullicino are immune to the laws of the land," the GRTU said.

It said that not had Parliament usurped all the parking spaces in the central most important part of Valletta and parking has also vanished from most streets that serviced the commercial sector, but Valletta had become one extensive construction site.

"Tourists are being warned by cruise liners and tour operators not to go to Valletta as Valletta has become a danger zone for pedestrians."

The chamber said it had asked Parliamentary Secretary Jason Azzopardi, as the person responsible for small business owners, and Parliamentary Secretary Chris Said, as the person responsible for commercial affairs, to provide an early means of redress. For a start, it was requesting the immediate suspension of the CVA.

“GRTU has also informed the government that shop owners in Valletta are not willing to pay their trading licences till the whole paving and construction works in Valletta are completed. The loss of business is tremendous, while shops` liabilities continue to grow as sales fall and fall. Why should traders pay their trading licence when they cannot trade,” Vince Farrugia, GRTU Director General asked..

He said the GRTU was asking the Ministry of Finance to seriously consider a package of compensation for Valletta shop and business owners.

“It is absolutely not fair to suffer and be forced to dismiss their workers when workers are not to blame for these, absolutely unplanned, state of affairs."

Mr Farrugia said the GRTU supported the paving project and the embellishment programmes but there was a serious and reasonable way of doing things.

"I beg Government to act rationally,” he said.

A spokesman for the Resources Ministry said when contacted about the Valletta works last week that whenever works were planned in Valletta, shopowners always asked the government to avoid the peak shopping periods, which were just before Christmas, the January sales and just before Mother's Day, and that had been taken into consideration when the current works were taken in hand.