Ex-justice minister files protest against transport authority

A former justice minister who regularly makes use of buses, Joe Brincat, yesterday filed a judicial protest against the transport authority objecting to the “unreasonable” routes he says have increased travelling times by up to three times.

The outspoken 67-year-old said the old system at least allowed a commuter to estimate the time needed to get somewhere and back. Now that the routes have been completely changed, the chaos that followed made it impossible for the planned time schedule to be adhered to, Dr Brincat said. Moreover, this was happening when the law obliged public transport operators to have buses leave termini on time.

The lawyer said that when he used to travel to Gozo with his family, it used to take him just 45 minutes to get to Ċirkewwa and, when he got there, he would board the ferry immediately because the bus services was pegged to that of the Gozo Channel. Now, the same trip took him 150 minutes and there was no such guarantee that the ferry would be there on arrival. Gozitans working in Malta were spending about six hours on buses every day to get from and back home, he added.

“This is so unreasonable that no reasonable person could have thought it out,” he added.

The decision to change the routes was purely administrative and Transport Malta had not accepted responsibility for the prevailing situation by raising other factors such as the drivers who did not turn up for work and every other “imaginable calamity”.

Dr Brincat asked the transport watchdog to declare the system it devised null because it was clear that it had designed the routes without making the correct considerations.

He is holding Transport Malta responsible for any possible damages he could sustain.