Over the past year the Office of the Parliamentary Ombudsman had been investigating a number of complaints lodged by members of the public who claimed payment for damages allegedly sustained by their vehicles due to road surface defects, which complainants claimed should have been addressed by Transport Malta.  A number of meetings were held with authority officials and numerous correspondence was exchanged where it was agreed that a procedure and criteria to be adopted in processing such claims needed to be determined, formalised and published by the authority.