Wardens were called out to examine an average of 30 collisions every day last year, according to the head of a government agency handling them.

Ray Zammit, the chief executive of Local Enforcement System Agency, said wardens were called out to roadside collisions more than 10,000 times last year.

Despite the high figure, only 12 wardens were tasked with inspecting such incidents, with just one car available to them in each of the island’s four regions.

“Rest assured that with this little bit of rain we just had now, several calls for wardens to inspect collisions would have already come in this afternoon,” he said.

At a press conference, Local Governance Parliamentary Secretary Stefan Buontempo said the government was increasing the number of wardens from 12 to 15 as well as adding another car to their fleet.

He said the government’s aim was to ensure that whenever requested, a warden would take no longer than 30 minutes to arrive on the scene of a collision.

“Today we have a situation where wardens are sometimes taking as much an hour or two to arrive on the scene, sometimes never arriving at all,” he said.

Dr Buontempo also urged motorists not to call wardens for simple bumper-to-bumper incidents which could be settled through simply filling in a form.

“It is important that we do not waste resources, everyone should keep these forms in their cars, as well as their driving licences and identification cards,” he said.