Payment for local council register

Please allow me to reply to the letter by Claudio Zammit under the heading Local Council Register (April 10).

As a councillor in the Zurrieq local council, Dr Zammit had every opportunity to check with the council's executive secretary on the facts.

For the sake of clarification, the Zurrieq local council was provided with updated asset inventory (maps and information) on five different occasions during 2006. As this is a service that the department provides to all the 68 local councils, all these documents and maps were given free of charge even though these come at a considerable expense to the department.

I would like to point out that the Department for Local Government carries out regular inspections in each and every locality in Malta and Gozo both for the purpose of assessing efficiency as well as to update the asset inventory. The latter is an important factor as it determines the funding each council would be apportioned according to the funding formula established in the Local Councils Act. As soon as each asset inventory is concluded and mapped out on the locality's map, a copy is given free of charge to every local council. It is only in the case of a request by any council for a second or subsequent copy of the asset register that a charge is levied.

In the case of Zurrieq, a second copy was requested.