Action being taken to speed up delivery of road tax licences

by David Kelleher

The backlog of road tax licence at the Police Licensing Department is being tackled immediately to ensure that drivers receive their licence on time, Transport Minister Censu Galea said yesterday.

Speaking to The Malta Business Weekly, Mr Galea said that the director of the licensing department was taking action to ensure that renewed road tax licences were delivered within the shortest time possible. The postal system has been adversely affected by General Workers' Union directives which have effectively caused a backlog of government mail at Maltapost.

The GWU had issued the directives in protest against the budget measures and this resulted in its members at Maltapost being told not to process any mail received from government departments or public entities. These directive naturally affected mail from the Police Licensing Department, and therefore motorists did not receive their renewed road tax licence on time.

The Malta Independent on Sunday highlighted the problem after complaints from motorists who were being fined by local wardens because they did not have a renewed road tax licence affixed to the windscreen of their vehicle.

Motorists were extremely upset because they had duly paid for the new licence but had not received it because of the backlog at Maltapost. Some motorists only received the licence after more than three weeks and copped a number of fines in the meantime. They were even angrier because the local wardens did not take into consideration the present dispute with the GWU.

Sources close to Maltapost told The Malta Business Weekly that mail was slowly being processed and the backlog of mail was a "few thousand" but nothing out of the ordinary.