Two men have filed separate judicial protests against the Prime Minister and the Malta Resources Authority to demand that they should be issued licences to distribute Liquefied Petroleum Gas.

The two, Nikolai Busuttil and Josef Spagnol, both claimed that they are being discriminated against in the issuing of licences for the distribution of LPG cylinders. Mr Busuttil faces criminal proceedings for distributing gas cylinders without a licence.

Both men had applied for the necessary licence with the Malta Resources Authority but claimed that in spite of satisfying all the requirements laid down by law, they were informed that their licence would not be issued “for the time being.”

They argued that the MRA was legally bound to process applications for LPG distribution within three months under the provisions of a 2008 legal notice. However, Mr Spagnol applied for a licence some nine months ago, and Mr Busuttil’s application is nearly a year old.

The two men insist that by dragging its feet in issuing a licence to them and to others in a similar situation, the MRA is in clear violation of the law, and attribute this behaviour to ulterior motives.

The government, they claimed, has arbitrarily chosen to limit the number of distributors and is carrying unjustified discrimination in preventing others equally qualified to distribute gas cylinders from doing so.

 

The two thus demanded that they be allowed to compete on a level playing field, asking the government to issue their distribution licences and compensate them for the damages they suffered.