Gozo ferry workers are tampering with ticket scanners so people travel for free

An NAO report has revealed Gozo Channel internal correspondence saying it “is pretty obvious terminal duty officers are tampering with the scanners”, namely on ticket sales

The Gozo Channel’s terminal duty officers are tampering with ticket scanners, a National Audit Office report has revealed.

A physical count carried out by the NAO as recently as May 2017 has revealed significant discrepancies between the number of cars actually on board the Gozo ferry, and those recorded in the deck logbooks by the chief officer – which is the amount based on information provided by terminal staff.

In a count carried out on 15 May 2017, it resulted that cars on board were 93 compared to just 62 recorded by terminal staff.

More discrepancies were found between deck logbooks and daily operation sheets – also information gathered by terminal staff.

In total, 13,353 passengers and 648 vehicles crossed between the islands without paying in 2016.

DescriptionTicketing SystemOperations records Mgarr DeparturesOperations records Cirkewwa DeparturesComments
Passengers2,533,552,546,9082,586,092This implies that 13,353 passengers and 648 vehicles were not recorded in the ticketing system during 2016
Vehicles720,626721,274737,840It also shows substantial variances between departures from Cirkewwa and those leaving from Mgarr of 39,184 in the case of passengers and 16,566 vehicles. In the latter case, the variance has increased by 1,022 (72%) and over that reported in 2013 (15,544).

 

A manually written figure in another report showed that between January and December 2016, a total 2,334 tickets were not mapped to any ferry. This would mean that the tickets were purchased and vehicles in the marshalling area never made it on the ferry. An internal audit later revealed the actual variance was 2,524.

Internal correspondence from January 2016 seen by the NAO stated that it “is pretty obvious that terminal duty officers are tampering with the scanners, and this does not involve only headcounts but tickets sales, i.e. revenue.”

The NAO, in a report that followed-up on previous audits, said that although Gozo Channel management had said it would investigate the discrepancies, these were still evident in 2017 with even higher variances.

In fact correspondence revealed “a rather fragmented approach adopted by management” and “inappropriate synergies between departments”.