Joe Brincat, a former Cabinet minister and ex-deputy leader of the Labour party, complained yesterday about excessive bureaucracy at the utilities’ revenue collector which, he said, was resulting in people having to queue for two or three hours.

Dr Brincat, a lawyer, said he had to wait of more than two hours to settle an issue regarding a “stratospheric” water and energy bill he had received when the meter had not even been read.

Dr Brincat filed a judicial protest against Automated Revenue Management System Ltd (ARMS), the company tasked with collecting revenue on behalf of Enemalta and the Water Services Corporation.

He protested against the company’s “self-imposed” requirement of examining the legal title to properties before entertaining requests to have the utility bills registered on a particular person.

He insisted ARMS had no right to check whether such people were the property owners, adding that there were many properties in Malta that were not registered in the names of the owners but in the name of those using the meter.

Nobody would be stupid enough to try to register the meters in his own name without having anything to do with the property

When a property was inherited, the heirs were given a hard time in transferring the services registered in the name of the deceased, he said, adding that because of excessive bureaucracy people were opting to leave the registered name unchanged.

Dr Brincat said ARMS’s role was to lease meters to people not places and, therefore, it had no legal right to know who owned the property.

“Nobody would be stupid enough to try to register the meters in his own name without having anything to do with the property,” he pointed out.

He complained that, despite promises that an employee would call to read his meter, this never happened.

Dr Brincat demanded that the company amend its procedures and offer him and other clients a solution to their problems.