Local councillors should undergo compulsory training on relevant laws and procedures before and after they are elected, according to Local Council Association president Marc Sant.
Such training, he added, should also be compulsory for executive secretaries.
People contesting local council elections, he said, should have to undergo some basic training to ensure they know what they were getting into.
If they were eventually elected, they should do some more intensive training to ensure they have a good understanding of the laws governing local councils.
The need for proper training of councillors was raised by the Local Governance Board in a decision handed down earlier this week.
The board, chaired by Joe Mifsud, found that Sannat mayor Philip Vella was not guilty of conflict of interest involving his mother who worked for a private company on the movie By the Sea, filmed in the locality. The allegations had been made by three councillors.
The board said elected councillors should be trained to better understand the law that governed them before and after being elected.
Dr Sant agreed with this, saying this was especially important when it came to financing and procurement regulations and understanding the remits and limits of local councils.
All too often, he said, councillors and executive secretaries were not properly trained and this resulted in tension, frustration and non-observance of the regulations.
One of the main problems was it was not clear who was responsible for training councillors and executive secretaries, since there was an overlap between the Local Council Association, the Association of Executive Secretaries and the Department of Local Government. This had to be addressed immediately.
Dr Sant said the LCA would be willing to take on the responsibility if it was given the necessary financial and human resources.
He added that, earlier this year, the LCA invited the Centre of Expertise for Local Government Reform, of the Council of Europe, to conduct a peer review of the local council system in Malta. The need for better training was mentioned in this review.
Dr Sant added that the government’s Management Efficiency Unit was also invited to look into the workings of local councils to draw up proposals to ensure they were managed efficiently and without bureaucracy.
He expressed hope that these reports would be taken seriously by all stakeholders and acted upon without delay.