Market hawkers were under a sustained barrage of criticism by Valletta traders yesterday, with the Merchants Street Business Community Association ending up writing to the Police Commissioner to request protection.

The situation is in danger of escalating as businessmen trading in Valletta are to meet today when, according to the Business Community of Valletta, “we will be advising our members of actions we will be taking to protect their interests against the hostile aggression they have been facing during the past few days.”

Hawkers of the monti, the Valletta open-air market, have occupied the capital’s Freedom Square and are holding noisy protests against the government’s decision to move them temporarily to St James Ditch while Merchants Street is paved, and then to move their site further down Merchants Street when they go back there permanently.

Yesterday, the GRTU, Chamber for Small and Medium Enterprises said that what the monti hawkers were doing in Valletta amounted to a serious threat to the civil rights of the people. The authorities, it added, should defend people against this intimidation.

The hawkers are backed by the Union Haddiema Maghqudin. The GRTU said that what the hawkers were doing was nothing more than intimidation, aiming to force the authorities to their way of thinking, which would put the country’s capital years back in time.

Everyone going into Valletta today, the GRTU added, was being forced by the hawkers’ behaviour to sign a petition whose contents were unclear.

The GRTU called on the Police Commissioner to ensure that civil rights were fully observed.

The UHM replied to the GRTU’s criticism by saying it was determined to continue fully supporting the monti hawkers. But it seemed to be distancing itself from the hawkers’ protests by seemingly limiting its support to them “about their relocation to a new site in Valletta.”

It criticised the GRTU for its derogatory remarks about the hawkers, saying it could not understand how the GRTU could claim to be able to defend the hawkers’ interests when the GRTU was doing its best to belittle them.

The GRTU should decide who it represented, the UHM said. As in many other similar occasions, the GRTU tried to play a tune according to who it was dealing with.

The UHM had nothing to say about the criticism levelled at the hawkers for their noisy protests.

But even the Valletta business community came out strongly against the actions being taken by the hawkers. The business community, represented by the GRTU, the Merchants Street Business Community Association, and the Republic Street Business Community Association, said the monti was unsightly and had reduced accessibility to outlets in that area. For years, they said, they had urged the authorities to relocate the monti.

Expressing support for the planned changes in the capital, they said the relocation of the monti was occurring after a two-year process of thorough consultation with them and their members.

The hawkers’ protests were causing damage not only to themselves but also to the entire commercial landscape of Valletta, the business community said. “We have witnessed acts of intimidation and undue pressure by people acting on their behalf especially in the process of collecting signatures for a petition purportedly in support of their protest.

There was room for the hawkers in Valletta, they said, and the space identified by the government was amply adequate. The protests were spiteful, pointless and damaging.

The community added they were “especially concerned with the decision of the Opposition Leader to appear to encourage by his presence these sort of public manifestations that attempt to compensate for lack of argument and reason with noise and threats.

“This does not augur well for the Opposition Leader’s views on the way our democracy should function in our time,” they said.

As for what Alfred Sant had said, the community insisted that should the Labour Party be considering changes to the Valletta strategy, “it should undertake at least as thorough and as open a consultation process as the government has accorded us during the past three years.”

In a later development, the Merchants Street Business Community Association wrote to the Police Commissioner asking for “protection and surveillance”.

It said monti hawkers yesterday called at all shops in the street collecting a petition regarding the location of the open-air market.

“All our members felt intimidated and some of them succumbed and signed.

“On the association’s instructions, other members rejected this petition.

“However we feel our members are now in a vulnerable situation and our property threatened,” the association said.