It is an honour for Malta to have been chosen as host to the next Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting (CHOGM) in two years' time. Fifty-four heads of state and government will be meeting in Malta for one of the most important meetings on the international scene. This event will put the eyes of these countries on our country. It is an event that must not be taken lightly and for which one must prepare thoroughly.

Nevertheless, that is where my enthusiasm stops. The government has been asked to state how much it is estimating we will have to fork out of the public coffers in order to finance this summit. There was no reply whatsoever. I do not know whether this silence has to do with some form of classified information or, as many have suggested, to the fact that no serious enquiries about the financial obligations directly related to this have even been made.

Last week, as in my habit, I was browsing through a selection of newspaper articles and came across an article in The East African. The Nairobi-based newspaper said that many had breathed a sigh of relief at the decision that the summit be held in Malta since the only bidder before our country's entry at the 11th hour was Uganda.

The journalist wrote that "there were concerns about whether Uganda had the infrastructure to host 54 heads of state and government along with their entourages. And, more important, whether a country that largely lives off donor handouts could afford to splash out the Ush80-100 billion ($40-50 million) the summit would cost at current prices".

Even though this figure was reported in sections of the local media, the government did not react by the time I am writing this article. The figure is shocking. Spending Lm14 million to Lm17.5 million on a summit for a government which has axed Christmas parties in order to cut costs is way too much! The least that one would expect is that the government states whether the Nairobi newspaper got it wrong. Furthermore, the government should tell taxpayers how much it will be spending out of their hard earned money on this event.

Such an explanation is due especially since the CHOGM announcement came at the same time the government told its employees that the traditional Christmas parties would be axed in what could be termed as a surreal cost-cutting exercise. Mind you, only the parties for normal employees were called off. The prime minister hosted heads of department just the same in Castille.

I will not go into the question on whether our country affords or needs to host such a summit. This tends to be an emotional argument with many subjective points of view. What I really think is essential is for the government to tell us what it budgets to spend. I will not go into asking the government what benefits our country would reap since they would be difficult to quantify. But costing the event is the minimum information that everyone would expect.

It could well be that the government did not carry out this exercise before submitting its bid. This would have been irresponsible behaviour, to say the least. But now what is done is done and the government has committed itself to the event. The least it can do is carry out a belated exercise and inform the public accordingly.

Lack of adequate preparation seems to be the order of the day for this government. Last Wednesday in Strasbourg, the European parliament's enlargement task force took the Maltese government to task for failing to train and provide qualified conference interpreters. According to Director General Olga Cosmidou (DG6) and Director General Gerald Bokanowski (DG7), Malta does not even have one single interpreter when 80 are needed.

The commission officials said that Malta had been warned various times to take care of this aspect. Nevertheless, it seems that after having Maltese approved as an EU official language, the government did nothing to help in the implementation of this decision.

We also fell behind in the translation of the acquis communautaire in Maltese. The onus is entirely on the Maltese government to produce translations and to ensure a thorough legal and linguistic revision. If these regulations are not made available in Maltese within a reasonable period of time, Malta could be subject to infringement proceedings.

This is nothing but the result of incompetence by default.

I take this opportunity to wish readers and staff of The Times a Merry Christmas.