Transport Minister Austin Gatt has been labelled a “political bully” by his Labour counterpart who condemned his “worrying and unacceptable” behaviour over the handling of the open top buses issue.

Joseph Sammut said the minister had been found guilty by the courts of being responsible for the damage caused to Garden of Eden Ltd.

The matter goes back to 2004 when the company wanted to operate open top double-decker buses in Malta and had imported three. Transport Malta had refused to licence them on grounds that they were not in conformity with the law in force at the time.

The Commission for Fair Trading had, in 2008, found in favour of the company and ordered the issue of licences for the three buses.

In a judgement last week, the company was awarded €50,000 in compensation after a court ruled that the Prime Minister and the Transport Ministry had impeded the company from making use of its open top buses.

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.