Eight notaries yesterday filed a judicial protest in the Gozo court complaining that Public Registry records were not being kept in Gozo.

Notaries Joanne Cauchi, Enzo Dimech, Kristen Dimech, Mariosa Grech, Maria Grima, Josianne Mifsud, Maria Vella Magro and Josepha Xuereb filed their protest against the Director of Public Registry (Gozo), the permanent secretary in the Ministry for Justice and Internal Affairs and the permanent secretary in the Ministry for Gozo.

They argued that an integral part of their professional work consisted in checking notes of hypothecary and other Public Registry inscriptions in connection with immovable properties. Such notes, relating to property in Gozo, had always been kept in bound volumes in Gozo by the Director of Public Registry there. The notes had always been accessible to whoever wished to carry out research. The director had also compiled an index of the notes.

About four years ago, the Gozo director had allowed the volumes and the indices to be transferred to Malta by a private company. This was claimed to have been done in order that the volumes would be electronically recorded, and the volumes were supposed to have been returned to Gozo after some months. To date, however, the volumes were still retained in Malta by a private company.

The notaries added that the volumes were not being stored with adequate security and that they were at risk of vandalism or fire. Furthermore, the private company was not keeping notes inscribed from 2001 onwards. The more recent notes were being retained in the Public Registry of Gozo but no proper use could be made of them as the relevant indices were in Malta.

The Gozitan notaries said they were being discriminated against when compared with notaries who worked in Malta, adding that they had to wait for between two and three weeks to obtain official searches from the Gozo Public Registry.

They complained that the official searches into property contained errors or omissions, and, furthermore, the system for ordering such searches was defective, with the result that the notaries had to pay for duplicated searches. If they did not pay for such duplicated searches, then the Public Registry director would not allow them to order other searches. This, the notaries said, was abusive and illegal.

In conclusion, the notaries called upon the authorities to immediately return the volumes and indices to Gozo.

Lawyer Joseph Ellis represented the notaries.