The news that many new ministers found offices that had been stripped bare was bad enough. What struck me, however, was the attitude shown by everyone that it’s a perfectly normal thing for outgoing ministers to wipe clean all computer hard disks, shred documents and destroy data before leaving office. I’ve heard that this even happens when a ministry changes hands within the same party.

Those documents and data were government property. They did not belong to either the outgoing party or minister.

Destroying such data harms Malta, causing disruption to government business and costing taxpayer money to redo the work and get things up and running again.

It is a childish and selfish mentality of ‘if I can’t play I’ll break thetoys’ and it needs to change. All work done by everyone in all ministries – including the minister himself – belongs to the State and must be left in place irrespective of who occupies the ministry.

I urge the new Government to take action to ensure this does not happen in the future.

A minister who is leaving office has the moral obligation to leave behind a ministry that will still be running smoothly when the next person steps in.