Maltese Ministers Refuse To Provide A List Of Direct Orders In Parliamentary Questions
The members of the Maltese Cabinet are refusing to submit information about the direct orders issued by their ministries.
In a set of parliamentary questions from the Deputy Jerome Caruana Cilia, the Minister of Economy Silvio Schembri, the Minister of Education Clifton Grima, the Minister of Culture Owen Bonnici, the Minister of the Interior Byron Camilleri and the Minister for Animal Rights Anton Refalo refused to provide the figures.
Instead, they ordered Caruana Cilia to go look for the figures in the government newspaper, which publishes the figures every six months. However, this goes completely against the practice established before this legislature.
It is an excuse that government entities have started to use to delay providing the crucial figures – especially in the case of the Malta Film Awards, which has rejected countless requests for freedom of information to seek a breakdown of the event. of €1.3 million that passed over his €. 400,000 budget.
Malta’s direct orders system is regularly abused by the ministries, which regularly fail to follow the established procedures. Even the head of the direct orders unit is a direct order employee.
Normally, any payment over €10,000 must be issued through a tendering process. However, there are rules for the Minister responsible to ignore the procedure, although this must not exceed a limit of €135,000.
This is rarely followed, with people close to the government reaping millions from the controversial system.
For example, Infrastructure Malta generated over €22.6 million in direct orders during the first six months of the year with Joseph Portelli, Bonnici Bros, Caqnu and others scoring big along the way.
What do you think about the lack of transparency?