Malta is passing through a full-blown crisis of lack of good governance and accountability. Hardly a week goes by without a new case cropping up. Scandals, wrongdoing and maladministration are denting the country’s moral fibre, raising deep concern over the sharp deterioration in long-cherished values and standards in today’s fast-changing times.

It is as if many are becoming immune to wrongdoing and that rules and regulations only exist to be broken or bypassed at whim. Take the latest case about the Gozo Ministry, that over the misallocation of NGO funds reported by the Commissioner for Voluntary Organisations.

The amount involved may appear small compared to those in scandals that rocked the island in recent years but if the commissioner’s findings are correct, and there is no reason to doubt his conclusions, the cases of misallocation of funds he brought up in his report would seem to be symptomatic of a general malaise that rules are there to be bypassed.

The Gozo Minister has denied any irregularities in the management of the funds. However, for the sake of transparency and accountability, the minister will now need to go further and explain in detail his denial of the commissioner’s findings.

Before going into what the commissioner has discovered, it may be useful to explain the mission of his office. Set up under the Voluntary Organisations Act of 2007, its task is “to strengthen the voluntary sector through various initiatives with the specific aim of promoting the work of voluntary organisations as well as encouraging their role as partners with the government in various initiatives”.

The office’s mission is to give greater visibility to the voluntary sector and “to guarantee transparency and accountability of the organisations that compose it in the carrying out of their important work. The office is the regulatory authority responsible for the sector”.

There are about 1,000 registered organisations but it appears that many have lapsed registration.

In his annual report for last year, the commissioner found that the Gozo Ministry was far from transparent when it gave thousands of euros to ineligible entities. The report, just tabled in Parliament, said that “significant parts” of a €50,000 fund were handed out by his ministry to organisations that did not qualify for any financing.

The situation as put by the commissioner is quite clear: to be eligible for funding, an NGO would need to be registered with his office and, also, present its annual report and accounts. Yet, despite this, the ministry last year approved funding to NGOs that had not been registered.

The mind boggles even further when considering that, according to the report, financial aid was given out to ineligible NGOs and refused to those that had declared their position.

If this is correct – and, again, there is no reason to doubt the commissioner’s report – the handing out of financial assistance to these NGOs constitutes an irregularity.

To give the benefit of the doubt to the ministry, at least at a stage when it has not yet deemed it fit to explain its denial, maybe there is a misunderstanding over the way things should be done. However, it has emerged that the commissioner has, in fact, met ministry officials to discuss the importance of following the law when giving out financial assistance.

Since the money allocated for distribution to NGOs is forked out by the State, the taxpayer rightfully expects those responsible for distribution to adhere to the rules in all cases.