It is high time that the government addressed the issue of the high cost of pedelecs or electrically-assisted bicycles with a view to helping reduce car congestion, traffic pollution and parking demand.

It also needs to admit its mistakes and reverse the highly negative policy of registering pedelecs and making them, if under 250W, any different from other bicycles under EU law.

While we may well fall half way up the EU fuel price index, Maltese industry sources noted that pedelec sales in the first quarter of this year fell by 75 per cent over last year.

We are way behind Italy, traditionally the back marker in pedelec sales.

It’s time we put Malta at the front, as a leader, given how well pedelecs handle hills, sweating and other traditional barriers to bicycle commuting.

At present, Malta with its tiny distances is the only State stupid enough to register very low-powered, wand mixer-sized motor pedelecs. The law was brought in because we could not enforce pulling children on illegal petrol- powered bicycles with four to six times the power off the road. We still can’t. Nor can we admonish their parents. So we punish law-abiding Maltese citizens who own sub-250w pedelecs instead.

Now we are seeing a free for all. Unregistered 1KW electric scooters, often from Sicily, ply our roads. If you can bring it in on a ferry or boat, you do what you want. Yet Maltese sub-250W electric bicycle owners are sent to two different places to register (we were promised TM would fix that) and jump through hoops to do so. All to register something under EU law that was never supposed to be registered in the first place. If it were, it would have a type certificate like any other motor vehicle, and one of the reasons why it is so subjective.

The law isn’t working, either scrap it or make the grant for buying a pedelec worth the wait at TM and the ‘hoop-jumping’. After all, the last thing the Minister of Transport wants to dois wear the dunce’s cap at the next Charter of Luxembourg (Bicycling) meeting under Malta’s EU presidency next year.