Not a single local council had ever offered to manage parker-run car parks before the current controversy surrounding them cropped up, the Transport Ministry said yesterday.

Likewise, a ministry spokes­person said, the Labour Party had never raised the idea in previous discussions, with its MPs well aware of ongoing negotiations between Transport Malta and Union Ħaddiema Magħqudin, which represents parkers.

The ministry released the statement a day after Mosta PL councillor Alex Muscat said that, in informal meetings held a few weeks ago, Resource Ministry officials had not given any indication that car parks would soon be opened up to tender.

“We had plans to embellish the Rotunda car park and surrounding area. Had we known about the government’s impending plans, we wouldn’t have bothered drawing up the proposals,” Dr Muscat argued.

A Resource Ministry spokes­person confirmed that the two parties had met but insisted discussions were still at a “preliminary stage”, something reiterated yesterday by Mosta mayor Shirley Farrugia.

The Transport Ministry insisted that plans had been discussed in both the Parliament and the media over the past two years.

The Government had planned to hand 34 car parks across the island to private investors, who would be given 10-year licences to manage them and charge a parking fee.

But with its majority in the balance, the Government had to suspend the process once the Opposition objected to it.

PL objections to private contractors bidding for government contracts betrayed the party’s “socialist instinct”, a Transport Ministry spokesperson charged. So too did the PL’s discomfort with having prices set by the open market.

The ministry statement ended by noting that the only genuine case of a public car park being privatised had been carried out by the Labour-led Ħamrun local council.

“This parking was in the council’s hands, was privatised without any consultation process, without any pre-established parking fees and without any provision for residential parking... but for the PL, what the PL-led Ħamrun local council can do, the government can’t.”

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