Government has justified the removal of a 13-year-old legal notice that regulates school transport fees, saying it was part of an exercise to update public transport legislation and remove “dead-letter regulations”.

“School transport tariffs were charged in the context of a closed market in the past and tariffs were regulated by the transport authorities. This has effectively not been the case for several years,” a spokesman for the Transport Ministry said.

The Consumers Association criticised the removal of Legal Notice 114 of 1998 since the regulations stipulated that school transport fees had to remain the same for a whole year.

The association said this provided price stability and allowed parents to plan school transport expenses ahead.

However, the ministry said that unscheduled transport services such as those offered for school transport were provided by “an open market and prices are not fixed or controlled”.

The spokesman explained that Transport Malta’s powers were limited to issues of safety and roadworthiness but it did not enter into matters of prices charged.

“Naturally consumers can resort to the competent authorities in cases where they feel the market has failed them, such as the Malta Competition and Consumer Affairs Authority,” she said.

At the beginning of the month the government published a set of legal notices updating the legislative framework for transport regulation in time for the new public transport set-up.

“The revisions also removed dead-letter regulations that were left on the statute books without any effect,” the spokesman said.

Apart from the removal of the school transport fee regulations the exercise saw the removal of other regulations, which the ministry said were outdated such as legal notices governing the price of a hydrofoil service between Malta and Gozo, the timetable for Comino passenger services and how often mail is to be carried on boats to and from Gozo.