Earlier this week, serious allegations involving a LESA officer surfaced, where apparently hundreds of unpaid contraventions were deleted from the system of Malta’s local enforcement agency.

The deleted contraventions are said to have been those of politicians, their drivers, and aides, leading business figures, and also top LESA officials themselves.

While LESA wardens scour and pin-point residential areas that have a serious parking problem all around the island, the rich only appear to be getting richer. 

Let’s look at Mosta as an example. As a growing town that is only getting bigger, there are quite a number of neighbourhoods where it has become known across the entirety of the town that past 6pm, it is near to impossible to find parking.

Just like the residents are aware of the issue, so are LESA wardens, who slowly begin to abuse from the fact that they know that if they come at 6:30am, right before people start leaving for work, they will find cars parked badly due to the lack of availability of parking for all residents.

Because the people that arrived home late the night before most probably did not find parking and had to leave their cars somewhere or another, which normally ends up being on a double yellow on a corner.

A double yellow should be a double yellow for everyone, speeding should be speeding for everyone; if not are we really living in a democracy? 

Like George Orwell once said, “all animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others,” and this very well fits the attitude that Malta’s government seems to be adopting.

While breaking the law in terms of parking badly is condemnable, it is downright unfair to be selective and forgive some people’s contraventions just because of the level of society that they are classified within.

Apart from that, there are many areas which could have more parking spaces if planning beforehand was thought out well.

It’s straight-up offensive for those people who live within a problematic neighbourhood, where you can very well spend up to 45 minutes going in circles around the block trying to find parking to then hear the recent allegations. 

Because these residents don’t have anyone on the inside to cancel or delete their contravention from existence.

I doubt anyone was surprised to hear the news allegations of illegalities coming directly from the centre point of enforcement, but this is completely unacceptable and efforts should be made to ensure that this never happens again.

What do you make of this?