The weekly tallinja bus cards are currently out of stock and only two-hour tickets are available, this newsroom can confirm.

Tourists who spoke to this newsroom said that they were astonished to learn that there were no weekly tickets available at the airport upon their arrival, especially when the tallinja bus card service was only launched recently.

This newsroom called the Malta Public Transport customer care unit which deals with such issues and asked whether the weekly bus card tickets are out of stock, to which a customer care agent replied in the affirmative.

When asked when the weekly tickets will be made available, the customer care agent said that there’s no set time-frame but the operator was aware of the problem and was doing his utmost to remedy the situation as quickly as possible.

The agent said that only two-hour bus tickets are currently available.

There was a chaotic start to the tallinja card services on 1 July, as hundreds waited in the queue to top up their cards at the Valletta terminus, some people fainting in the heat.

The police had to intervene as tempers flared as people waited for long hours to charge their card, only to find out that they still had to pay €2 for the service because the system was not working properly.

Some also complained that they hadn’t received their bus card at their homes by post while others hadn’t their photo printed on the card.

But things started to improve as days went by with a good number of commuters telling this newsroom that they were satisfied with the new service.