A meeting for Valletta and Floriana residents, held yesterday at the Boffa Hall at MCC, (only one-third of the hall was filled) seemed to agree with the main principles underlying the coming reform of parking and traffic in Valletta.

Except, that is, some representatives of the Monti hawkers who stormed out in anger at being moved down to near the Valletta market.

But the category of people who are definitely and clearly not the favourites with the Valletta residents are the ubiquitous karozzini (horse-drawn cab) owners. There was a man sporting a Che Guevara T-shirt who exploded: “We do not want any karozzini in Valletta. They should not be allowed into the city, he argued, whenever a karozzin stops in St Christopher’s Street, all traffic up to Castille is blocked.

Minister Austin Gatt was no less categorical and even more colourful: “I was born in Valletta and want to die here but I have every incentive to leave, as living in Valletta has become impossible. I am not ready to continue living here when most times, whenever I go out of my house, I have a horse’s backside in my face and the horse doing what comes naturally to him on my doorstep.”

Even so, the minister preached balance and consensus. He has already had a meeting with the karozzin owners and they have promised him to obey any orders they are given, to which the Che Guevara person responded “They listen to no one and think they’re God”.

But Dr Gatt promptly replied that they are better than the Monti hawkers because the latter just stamp their feet.

The two Monti hawkers caused a ruction. One of them told the meeting he has been a Monti hawker for 50 years . “First they pushed us out of Valletta, then they got us in front of St John’s. Then they said that was not the right place and shifted us to Merchants Street. Now you want to push us even further back. That place is not a good one for us. You are going to kill us as we will die of hunger. And since we were moved from St John’s Square, how come you are now pushing us towards the Greek church and the Jesuits’ church? This is being done to favour the shop owners, but we too have families who depend on us.”

Only one person dared applaud him for this outburst. Dr Gatt candidly replied that locating the Monti in Merchants Street was one of “our mad decisions”. This was the politicians’ doing and it was a mistake. “We must own up to our mistakes.”

Then he attacked the Monti owners: “You did not come to the meeting we called,” but they sprang angrily to their feet and said that he must not call a meeting for them at a time when they are open for business and, somewhat contradictorily, they added they had had to close shop to attend yesterday’s meeting.

Dr Gatt said that in most cities in Europe, such as Florence, the market is in the old core of the city (in this case next door to the Medici chapels) but they are organised, well-presented and attract people. The implication was that the Valletta Monti is anything but that.

This and other comments gave the minister the opportunity to point out the whole rationale of the current exercise. This is a consultation exercise: if the consultation does not work out, nothing will be done, and if there is an agreement to do something, then something is done. Those who attended the meeting were given a questionnaire which is to be submitted to the Valletta and Floriana local councils by the end of this month. After that, the final draft document will be published, but Dr Gatt warned people that the final document would not satisfy the needs and opinions of all.

Predictably, too, the meeting brought out people with special problems and needs. A frail old woman who lives in Independence Square said her children take it in turns to sleep with her and when she is sick she needs them to do her shopping. So she wanted them all to get a V licence or, if this is abolished, a similar exemption, since she does not know whose turn it will it be tomorrow.

A man who lives in the bottom part of Valletta said that closing Merchants Street to outgoing traffic could be risky for Valletta residents as when he needed to be taken to hospital during the night, no car could pass through the road at the Fishmarket at 4am given the congestion of fishermen’s vans.

These are issues of enforcement, Dr Gatt replied, which is where we in Malta fail all the time, while Valletta mayor Paul Borg Olivier urged the residents not to make issues out of exceptions because it would distort the whole discussion.

Another enforcement issue regards the passage of trucks to service homes at 5am, as well as cranes and gas trucks.

As explained in yesterday’s papers, the whole exercise aims to drastically reduce the number of cars that enter Valletta, especially by making it economically unfeasible for people who work in Valletta to park their cars all day, mainly without payment, thus hogging the few spaces in Valletta.

A total of 950 parking spaces will be eliminated in illegal places and in narrow streets, as well as all government reserved parking. These parking eliminated parking spaces will be replaced by an equivalent number of parking slots at the new Park & Ride project at Blata l-Bajda from where a fleet of nine electric buses will transfer people to near the Opera House in Valletta. If three people use the same car and leave it at P&R, they get free tickets on the shuttle. At no point will anybody at P&R have to wait for more than seven minutes before the next bus comes along.

The structure of payments involved must be changed. At present, with parking on the streets being free, all parking spaces, even for Valletta residents, are taken up by 8am. With the coming change, using public transport to go to Valletta must become the cheapest option, the second cheapest P&R, then MCP car park and the most expensive, parking in Valletta.

As explained yesterday, the government is toying with the idea of doing away with the Lm20 V licence to enable cars to enter Valletta. This will be substituted by a Pay per Use system which will charge a small sum (the minister mentioned 5c but only as an example) to enter Valletta and the system may be made flexible enough to allow free entrance to Valletta for instance in the evening or at the weekend.

Among the options which can be considered there are:

• parking meters

• Pay and Display

• Scratch cards

• Telepass system as on the highways in Europe,

• A radio beam that debits one’s bank account, or

• CCTV, like the speed cameras, which take a picture of the number plate and charge.

It was clear in yesterday’s meeting that the minister’s own preference was for the last two options since these, and only these, have enough flexibility to make the system work.

Dr Gatt also announced that at tomorrow’s Cabinet meeting a decision will be taken on the installation of a number of escalators from the Grand Harbour area up to Castille. Government wants to liberalise sea transport across Grand Harbour and from Sliema and St Julian’s to Valletta provided there is adequate transport from the quay side to the centre of Valletta. This can also be provided by installing a number of two-seater and four-seater electric vehicles which can transport people from any point in Valletta to any other point in the city, for a small fee.