News • December 14 2003

A Broad(ley) coincidence

It may be pure coincidence but the person who today is project manager for the private company responsible for the bus-ticketing machines has the same name of a person who acted as a consultant to the Public Transport Authority in 1995 at the height of the bus ticketing scandal.
Derek Broadley is a consultant and project manager with Alberta Fire Fighting and Security Equipment, the company that won the tender for the bus ticketing system currently in place. He is also the contact person on enquiries related to the bus-ticketing system.
Together with others Alberta Fire Fighting and Security Equipment failed to win the 1995 tender for a bus ticketing machine system and were reputed to be very acrimonious about whole affair.
But for people acquainted with the bus-ticketing saga since the first failed attempt to introduce the system in 1995, the name Derek Broadley is more than familiar.

In 1995 the government Management Systems Unit had a certain Derek Broadley engaged with it on contract as a consultant. One of the portfolios in the hands of the MSU consultant was the Public Transport Authority. Broadley acted as a consultant to the PTA and could have possibly been involved in the design of the bus-ticketing tender with access to sensitive information.
When contacted by MaltaToday on Friday at the Alberta office, Derek Broadley, refused to confirm or deny whether he was the same person, who had advised the PTA in 1995. "I am not prepared to give any form of statement unless you show me the text you intend to publish," was Mr Broadley’s terse reply.
Call it co-incidence but it seems that the name Derek Broadley has been intrinsically linked to the bus-ticketing saga in all its stages since 1995.
The current system has been operational for only six months and it is already mired in controversy with the public transport association reporting a loss of income to the tune of Lm160,000 because of fraud.
The Labour Party has kept an eerie silence on the current bus-ticketing fiasco (see adjacent story) but speaking in Parliament Opposition spokesman Charles Buhagiar has described the system as an outdated one.
kurt@newsworksltd.com