The owner of a field close to a clubbing venue in Ta’ Qali says he is netting over €7,000 a weekend by offering parking facilities despite not having a licence to operate.
The property owner-turned-parker estimates that about 3,000 vehicles belonging to partygoers frequenting a nearby clubbing complex park in his field between Fridays and Sundays. Charging them a fixed rate of €2.50 per vehicle, that works out at some €7,500.
The parker can usually be seen accompanied by two other men who help in managing traffic.
We cannot do anything about this sort of thing
Over the past months, the transport authority have stepped up efforts to monitor parkers and their operations in an attempt to cut down on abuse. However, it is unable to take any legal action because the person is making use of private land he owns.
“Transport Malta only regulates those parkers who are using public car parks. We cannot do anything about this sort of thing,” a spokesman told this newspaper.
No parker could operate a public car park without a licence issued by the transport watchdog, he said, but it was a different matter altogether when dealing with individuals making use of their own land.
Those in possession of a licence are subject to regular checks carried out by Transport Malta officials to ensure they are abiding by the regulations in place, which bars them from demanding any form of payment.
Since the parker at Ta’ Qali did not require such a licence, he was therefore free to charge any fee he wanted, the spokesman noted.
Contacted about the use of a field as a car park, a spokesman for the Planning Authority told this newspaper that, as long as there was no “material change in the use of land”, as is stipulated by the Development Planning Act, the owner of the field did not require any permission to use the site as a car park.
Drivers who visit the place on a regular basis are irked that there seems to be no regulation in place. Regular partygoers who spoke to this newspaper said that, as parking places in the area were limited, they had no other option but to make use of the parker’s services.