Boundaries overstepped

As an American academic and attorney, I am shocked to read that "a junior college teacher was fined Lm500 (under the Malta Travel and Tourism Services Act) for providing students with information during an outing to Valletta" (September 20).

Section 32(1) of the Act says that "No person shall carry on the business of an organised excursion operator unless he [has] a licence." The teacher did not violate this section because he was not carrying on a business.

The Act's Section 2 defines tourists as those outside their "usual environment for less than 12 months and who stay at least one night in the place visited". The junior college students did not qualify as tourists nor did they sleep overnight in Valletta.

The Malta Tourism Authority (MTA) under the guise of Section 2's definitions, under which an organised excursion is "any organised excursion, of five or more persons, in or around Malta" penalised the teacher for organising one without a licence.

But the definitions are also qualified by the very first sentence of Section 2 which holds that: "In this Act, unless the context otherwise requires". The MTA ignored the non-business context when it slapped the teacher for doing his job.

By ignoring the non-business context, the MTA should penalise me repeatedly for avidly touring my foreign wife and children around Malta every time we visit. We are "five or more" tourists under the Act.

The MTA overstepped its legal boundaries when it assumed that a tourist licence gives its tourist guides the right to teach junior college students during school hours and usurp the teacher's academic rights. It also violated the constitutional rights of assembly and expression.