The Malta Community Chest Fund has still not enrolled with the Commissioner for Voluntary Organisations, despite several warnings to do so before the annual charity marathon L-Istrina held last week.

Were it not for the direct intervention of Social Policy Minister John Dalli, who gave the MCCF "unconditional approval", the €2.3 million collected would have been raised illegally.

"It is unfair on other voluntary organisations that have enrolled," Commissioner Kenneth Wain said, adding that there were almost 350 enrolled organisations so far.

In 2007, a law was passed to regulate the voluntary sector but several big organisations, including those run by the Curia and the MCCF (run by the President), have not yet enrolled.

This not only means they must get a police permit to collect funds but, legally, they do not qualify for assistance from the government or government agencies, including free airtime and advertising from the state broadcaster, the Public Broadcasting Services, as was given to MCCF for L-Istrina this year.

Enrolled organisations, which make up the Council for the Voluntary Sector, are "disappointed" by the preferential treatment towards MCCF, which they labelled as "discriminatory" towards other NGOs.

"Should the President be above the law? He should lead by example and safeguard it," council chairman Robert Farrugia said, adding this was not the first time the relatively new law had been disregarded.

He described the minister's intervention as a "blank cheque" to the MCCF to distribute the money raised from L-Istrina as it wished.

"This went too far," he said, adding he was also disappointed by the behaviour of the PBS, a public-funded organisation.

"Are enrolled organisations given the same opportunities by PBS?" he asked.

Through the authority granted to him by law, the minister allowed the MCCF to give out the money collected even to organisations that are not enrolled.

Mr Farrugia pointed out that the list of beneficiaries had not yet been announced, so, contrary to usual practice, people donated money without knowing which organisations would benefit.

When asked if this meant the money could go to anyone, Prof. Wain said: "Yes, exactly."

"In essence, what was done was legal because the minister is allowed to grant such exceptions. But they are meant to be one-off cases.

"I had informed them a very long time ago about this problem. The same thing must not happen next year," he said.

Prof. Wain felt that if the law was not followed, it was pointless and counter-productive. Last year, similar problems arose when PBS was in charge of distributing the funds. Several selected beneficiaries were not enrolled with the commissioner, namely those run by the Curia.

Prof. Wain said that "as far as I know" all beneficiaries, which ended up receiving funds were made to enrol before getting the money and in some cases this was done at the very last minute.

However, since the law was still very new, the MCCF was not forced to enrol. Now, though, Prof. Wain is insisting something had to be done for the good of the voluntary sector.

Efforts to obtain comments from the President's Office yesterday were unsuccessful. However, the reason the MCCF gave to the commissioner for not enrolling, was that it had legal advice from the Attorney General that it did not need to because it was partly state-run, since the President was part of the State.

Prof. Wain disagreed and said he was sticking to the legal advice he received to the contrary.