Guard and Warden Service House Ltd managing director Kenneth De Martino looks back on the last 10 years of local wardens as the agency which carries out 80 per cent of all local enforcement.

One of the individuals who took a personal interest when the government announced it was going to outsource enforcement to private firms over a decade ago was Kenneth De Martino. At the time, he headed a travel company and, looking back, he observed: "The enforcement system today is certainly not what is was on day one, and it is certainly not what my dream was all about."

"It became my baby and is still one of my pet projects within the KDM Group for the simple reason that I strongly believe that enforcement is necessary in Malta."

He pointed out that the situation on local roads today is a far cry from what it was a decade ago. "The local warden did make a difference. It was not easy for the local warden, for our agency and for the local councils, who are managing the system, because we all faced a very steep learning curve," he observed.

Mr De Martino recalled the first week of operation in January, 2000: "It was such a new era that we had mayors and local councillors all out on the roads, waiting for the local warden to pass by - something that won't happen today, obviously, 10 years down the line."

The public first accepted the local warden in a positive way but the system started to become a bit of an issue when the public started to feel the pinch. This, he said, was because what was tolerated on the roads up to then was not tolerated any more. "Although the warden is the front-liner, many a time it is not the local warden who decides what to enforce, how to enforce and when to enforce," he pointed out.

"It is the council itself, through the joint committees that have been formed. But the face of the system, the ambassador of the system, is certainly our warden agency."

This system is set to continue under the new legislation that was recently enacted in which the joint committees are going to become formalised regions, which will continue to manage enforcement on behalf of the local councils.

Mr De Martino said the warden has three responsibilities in the area of enforcement: to educate, to deter and, finally, to enforce, if this is deemed necessary. Each warden is assigned a route by the joint committee at the time prescribed by the local council.

This, he pointed out, is the big difference between the wardens and the police, who are answerable to the public 24 hours a day through the local police station and police headquarters. "The public at large cannot phone up and say 'can you send me a warden please because I have an issue?' That is not the responsibility of the warden agency."

Enforcement is effected not only through the physical presence of the wardens but through technology employed by the company like CCTV cameras, with a fully equipped control room manned 24 hours a day seven days a week, an enforcement service that is unique to The Guard & Warden Service House Ltd.

Mr De Martino said he has a different view to the perception that the local warden is out there to catch you in the act, and to raise money for the council and denied that wardens had quotas that had to be met with contraventions:

"We are involved enough in the system to be able to see and touch on a day-to-day basis the difference between the possibility of actually deterring an incident or a contravention and when we have people who persistently abuse and keep on taking chances.

"The Maltese saying 'toqrosli l-but biex nitgħallem' (you have to pinch my pocket so that I will learn) is very true."

Although there are no quotas, he said the agency benchmarks contraventions and the efficiency of each warden and the route. "It is one of our responsibilities as a warden agency to make sure that the service that is offered to the local council, through these joint committees, is affective."

When routes are changed, this is to ensure equal enforcement throughout the locality, Mr De Martino said. Apart from enforcement, the wardens were involved in traffic management on site, to make sure that there are no issues, and that the traffic will not be allowed to pass through an area that is under their control.

Looking ahead, Mr De Martino said he was confident an even better enforcement system would emerge in the next five years and that the services of the local warden will be maximised. Enforcement, he said, could be extended to other government entities like tourism, the maritime field and finance.

"The Guard & Warden Service House Ltd presented a detailed report to the government on the way the system is working, and made some interesting propositions to maximise the concept of a local warden rather than a traffic warden, which would encompass new responsibilities, including the environment."

Certain principles would still remain: the concept of equal enforcement; the concept that the local warden would be on pre-defined routes; and the concept that the warden has to give a service to the local council, not to the public at large.

The local warden set-up involves heavy investment that has been ongoing to provide the service. This encompasses, apart from the uniformed warden, all the equipment that is required, including transport and the automated system whereby, once a contravention has been keyed in, it cannot be erased ever.

"Very recently we changed the fleet of our vehicles with new Ford Fiestas. We are going to change our fleet of motorbikes in the weeks to come. We have seriously looked into the possibility of not only changing the handheld computers, but we are looking at adopting the latest technology which encompasses a lot of other services within that actual handheld."

Through this new technology, wardens will be fed information constantly while on their routes, there would be an integrated camera and the warden would be able to communicate with the Control Room more frequently and more easily.

"With the changes that the central government is putting into place, we would probably see a renewed enforcement service, and a renewed enforcement environment that will be healthy and will hopefully be up to the standard that the local councils and the central government are expecting. I am confident our warden agency is well placed to keep on managing a very large chunk of this enforcement in Malta and Gozo," he said.