The GRTU – Chamber for Small and Medium Enterprises – has accused the government of bringing ridicule on the public administration by its inaction regarding the parking being resorted to by the monti open air hawkers.

It said it was shameful that the government had allowed another week to pass without resolving a minor issue. Was it possible, it wondered, that the government could not resolve even such a minor matter? The GRTU has been waiting three weeks for a decision, it said, but it seemed that everyone was asleep.

The Chamber of Commerce and Enterprise has also criticised the government for allowing the situation to continue.

The GRTU said the government has awarded monti hawkers Lm80,000 a year of public money for free parking. What was worse was that under the very law the government had enacted, it had bound itself to indicate by legal notice an adequate place for hawkers to park. The government had instead done nothing.

The GRTU said it had proposed to the government that it should issue a legal notice yesterday in observance of the law, by indicating a parking area at the lower end of Valletta where hawkers could park their vehicles. It was madness to allow the square in front of the President’s Palace, and main roads in the capital to be occupied by vans which were killing trade by taking the parking of shoppers, and which were cheapening Valletta and bringing it to a level of decadence that no one in their right senses would want.

The GRTU said it was appealing again to the government to stop ridiculing the public administration and to issue the legal notice without any further loss of time.