Suckling pig events taking place in unlicensed venues are sprouting up all over the island and eating away at the profits of legitimate restaurateurs, two of them complained yesterday, accusing the authorities of being toothless in the face of this abuse.
The owners of two restaurants in Mġarr said it was an open secret that these “majjalati”, as they are known in Maltese, were being organised but it seemed like no one was doing anything about it.
The owners spoke up during a half-day seminar that brought together members of the Malta Hotels and Restaurants Association and the Malta Environment and Planning Authority.
Edgar Sammut, the owner of Il-Barri Restaurant, and Godwin Micallef, from L-Ingliż Restaurant, expressed their frustration at this “rampant abuse” and complained that the authorities were not doing much to stop it.
They claimed farmhouses around the island were being used to organise these events for large groups when they were not licensed to do so.
“So we pay all our taxes and big sums to be up to scratch with the regulations and there are some people who have nothing in order and are being allowed to operate anyway,” one said.
Mr Micallef said he was at the Għammieri Government Farm last year and saw an advert on one of its notice boards about a staff event to be held in July at one of these illegal places.
“The police, Mepa, the ministry all know about this but still nothing is being done,” Mr Sammut said.
Mepa CEO Ian Stafrace acknowledged the problem, saying this had to be tackled through joint action since these places were not covered by a licence to operate and neither did they conform to other regulations, including hygiene and labour laws.
“I’m not saying this to place the problem on someone else’s lap but it is not only Mepa that is responsible. They are probably breaching labour and fiscal laws, although they are operating from a farmhouse which is, strictly speaking, legal,”he said.
Mepa’s head of enforcement, Alex Borg, promised to look into the matter which would require coordinating enforcement departments of different entities.
The rest of the interventions at the seminar focused mainly on excessive bureaucracy at Mepa and the fact that there were too many authorities that needed to be consulted or from whom restaurant owners needed permits. They said this was tiring and, at times, disheartening. Dr Stafrace said 99.4 per cent of applications in 2011 were dealt with within the established timeframe.
There were also complaints about the lack of guidelines on the placement of tables and chairs and about encroachment.
One restaurant owner claimed he had been fined by a policeman because three of his clients took chairs outside on the pavement to sit on while smoking a cigarette.
Opening the seminar, Tourism Minister Mario de Marco acknowledged there were some aspects of permitting that needed to be looked into so as to make it easier for businesses to operate. He said the Mepa reform was speeding up the processing of applications.