PBS airtime given to Siġġiewi home 'was against the law'

Dar tal-Providenza, the Siġġiewi Church home for people with disability, raised a record €617,585 on New Year's Day but the annual fund-raiser should not have been given airtime on state TV, according to the regulator of the voluntary sector.

"This clearly went contrary to the law," the Commissioner for Voluntary Organisations, Kenneth Wain said.

This is the second organisation to have come into Prof. Wain's line of fire.

Last week, he criticised the Malta Community Chest Fund, which organised L-Istrina, for not enrolling as a voluntary organisation before the Boxing Day charity event, despite his repeated appeals.

Prof. Wain has threatened to resign over the matter if his office is further undermined.

The dispute arose because a number of organisations - including those run by the Church and the MCCF, chaired by the President of the Republic - opted not to enrol as an NGO under the Voluntary Organisations Act.

Enrolling as an NGO is not compulsory but it makes registered organisations eligible for state benefits and grants, including, for example, free airtime on the state broadcaster, PBS.

Prof. Wain said that while the MCCF was granted a concession by the Social Policy Minister to organise L-Istrina, the organisers of Dar tal-Providenza had no such dispensation.

It was therefore unfair and technically illegal for PBS to grant free hours of airtime to the charity marathon, which was mostly aired on private stations Net TV, One TV and Favourite Channel but had some hours of airtime on PBS too.

The home's director, Fr Martin Micallef, said the Curia was discussing the issue with the Office of the Prime Minister and the commissioner's legal adviser. This was confirmed by a Curia spokesman.

Fr Micallef said that as Dar tal-Providenza always did, it had applied for the required police permit.

Prof. Wain said a police permit had nothing to do with the issue at hand. "A police permit simply enables you to collect money. It does not qualify you for state benefits, which includes airtime on PBS. That is what the law says," he insisted.

His argument is that such preferential treatment makes it unfair on the 350 other organisations that have enrolled and it also renders the law, and his role, redundant.

PBS chairman Clare Thake Vassallo said she was "comfortable" with the police permit.

"PBS has been instrumental in helping organisations raise the public money they need and will continue to carry out the public service as far as we can," she said.

Neither the Curia nor the MCCF have yet explained what is hindering them from enrolling as NGOs.

The MCCF said it did not need to enrol and had advice from the Attorney General, the state's legal adviser, on the matter. When asked for a copy of such written advice, a spokesman for the MCCF refused.

Lawyer Max Ganado, who drafted the 2007 law to regulate the voluntary sector, has said that although the MCCF published its accounts, it should go a step further and make use of the system in the law to lead by example.

The Attorney General has not yet replied to questions for his advice to better explain his advice in terms of the law.

Last year, similar problems arose when PBS was in charge of distributing the funds of L-Istrina. Several selected beneficiaries were not enrolled with the NGOs Commissioner, namely those run by the Curia.

Prof. Wain said that "as far as I know" all beneficiaries that 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 at the time.