Victor Spiteri, President of the Public Transport Association, has assured a Spanish tourist that the association would be calling on Transport Malta to suspend a bus driver over aggressive behaviour.

Mr Spiteri told the tourist is a letter that he hoped that the experience had not marred her holiday. He also apologised for the incident.

Tourist Isabel Reymundo Cuesta in a letter to the newspapers had reported that the incident occurred in the early afternoon of June 29 on the route 27 bus to Marsaxlokk.

She identified the driver by his tattoo and explained that when she and a friend boarded the bus and asked for tickets to Marsaxlokk, they handed the driver a €1 coin. The fare was 47c.

The driver refused to give change and began to scream and insult them to the extent that the vein in his neck swelled.

"He insulted us very aggressively. He became so violent that he came to me and pulled my arms strongly trying to throw me out of the bus. He snatched our tickets away from my hands, he crushed them and throw the 1 euro coin to my face."

Some people called on the driver to calm down.

"We were very afraid and I had to call to 112 from my mobile phone. They gave me the number of the police office in Valletta and they told me to go to the police office in the bus station," the tourist said.

They however stayed on the bus. A policeman boarded the bus, gave them back their tickets and "convinced the bus driver to do his work".

The tourist later filed a police report.

"I am not recommending travel to Malta because of this issue and we are going everything we could to spread our experience. In fact a copy of this mail will be sent to the most popular newspapers in Spain as well as some Maltese ones," the tourist wrote.

"We went to Malta for vacation and we received insults, aggressiveness, bad manners, injuries. We do not deserve this kind of treatment. Our only offence was paying our tickets and waiting for our change as everybody does."