A group of men recently reinstated as policemen included former soldiers, the shadow minister for Home Affairs, Jason Azzopardi, told Parliament this evening.

“One could be the best soldier but that does not make you a policeman,” he said.

Serving as a policeman required specialised training but this group included a person who could not even write a traffic ticket.

Dr Azzopardi also asked what had become of electoral promises to settle overdue overtime payment for policemen and for policemen to receive preferential tax rates on overtime.

He complained of vindictive transfers saying one officer received two transfers in the same day and another four in a week. Another 80 transfers were made just before the MEP elections. Was this because of exigencies of the service or had the government been worried about losing votes, he asked.

Dr Azzopardi asked what had become of two inquiry reports which the minister had promised to publish but had kept under wraps.

The first was about the case where a person was wrongly arraigned over a hold-up in Birkirkara and the second was over how the police dropped charges against a man who had assaulted police officers at Zabbar station.

To rub salt into the wound, when a Times of Malta journalist asked about the latter report, the minister replied by asking him who his former employer was.

This was a reflection of how old habits died hard for a labour government which had promised a new style of politics.

He also noted that last week the minister had said that the former government had started building the police academy without having all the Mepa permits in hand.

Dr Azzopardi said the permit was issued a year previously and could be seen on the planning authority website.

Sign up to our free newsletters

Get the best updates straight to your inbox:
Please select at least one mailing list.

You can unsubscribe at any time by clicking the link in the footer of our emails. We use Mailchimp as our marketing platform. By subscribing, you acknowledge that your information will be transferred to Mailchimp for processing.