The mayor of Marsa is up in arms over the government’s decision to reduce the size of his council by two members and slash its budget by €20,000, saying this does not take the migrants’ open centre into consideration.

Marsa mayor Francis Debono. Photo: Paul Zammit Cutajar

Francis Debono and the council’s executive secretary, Adrian Attard, have filed a judicial letter of protest in court over the matter.

With the decision, the council has been reduced from seven to five members and its financial allocation by €20,000 to €464,000.

The government’s decision was based on a statistical drop in the number of residents in the locality.

But Mr Debono holds that the authorities disregarded the fact that Marsa has an open centre housing mig­rants who use the council’s services.

“This decision does not make sense. The open centre can take up to 500 people and they are using the locality’s services despite not being officially registered as Marsa residents,” he said, describing the decision as “unfair”.

The decision is not fair

“Our locality has this particular situation and the authorities have completely disregarded it,” Mr Debono said when contacted.

Marsa is due to elect a new council in the April 11 poll but Mr Debono is not hopeful the matter will be settled before then.

“When someone comes to the council offices, we do not check whether they are registered residents before seeing to their requests. We cannot assume that the open centre is not there as the council still has to provide services. The 500 migrants at the open centre should be considered as residents,” Mr Debono and Mr Attard argue in their judicial letter.

“It is not fair or legal that a distinction is made between people who are Maltese or those eligible to vote and those who are not. The council cannot discriminate between residents by offering its services to a few and not to all.”

The amount taken away from the council’s financial allocation was almost equal to the annual repayment on the council’s offices.

“The reduction in the financial allocation and the reduction of the council by two councillors are not justified,” they said, calling for the decision to be withdrawn.

The letter was filed against the National Statistics Office, the Director of Local Government and the Electoral Commission.

Mr Debono also argued it was unfair that a recent pre-electoral border realignment exercise had shifted a number of streets from Marsa to the Ħamrun council, further reducing the number of registered Marsa residents.

St Anthony Street and Holy Trinity Street are two examples.

Lawyers Aron Mifsud Bonnici and Abigail Critien signed the judicial letter.