Public boat marinas berthing fees

I was amazed to read the report (The Times Business, August 11) that boat owners berthing at our public marinas built with government funds have been benefiting so much at the expense of the taxpayer.

It is really incredible that for many years Maltese flag owners have been enjoying not only a 40 per cent discount on berthing fees but they also pay nothing for water and electricity consumption! The report highlights the fact that this concession is carried to the extreme by boat owners leaving their air-conditioners on all week so that they can relish in cool temperatures when on their week-end jaunts. Not surprisingly, there is much wastage of such un-metered water.

Whoever decided these concessions in the first place must have had a vested interest. This is absolutely unbelievable especially when householders are being made to pay a 17 per cent surcharge on their water and electricity bills.

All this has come in the open because the Malta Maritime Authority has now announced that the system of discounts is to be phased out and that from some future date a 10 per cent surcharge on mooring fees will be introduced to cover water and electricity consumption.

High time too! Surely the owners, especially of the many cabin cruisers and yachts costing tens of thousands of liri that clutter the public marinas, cannot claim to have "breadline" incomes.

Another factor that surely irritates taxpayers is that the same report stated that some boat owners were in default of the payment of half-yearly berthing fees by up to two-and-a-half years.

The report stated that finally action has been taken to bring these laggards to book and that the MMA is now concentrating on pressing for payment of arrears of about one year. Why there should be difficulty in enforcing the collection of mooring fees is beyond me.

If one does not pay within a reasonable time it should be a simple matter for the boat owner to be made to forfeit the privilege of a mooring place in a public marina thus forcing transfer to one of the private marinas where berthing fees are much higher and all services, including water and electricity consumption, have to be paid for separately.

What still puzzles me is how a government-owned authority was permitted to tolerate non-payment of berthing fees for as along as more than two years in the first place.

My stomach turns when I hear public pronouncements on accountability, the more so when I come across, in my voluntary work, cases where families who genuinely have hit hard times have had their water and electricity services suspended because of unpaid bills.