Government officials employed with the Home Affairs Ministry’s customer care unit have been detailed to attend meetings with the public organised at PL clubs located in the minister’s constituency.

According to newspaper adverts titled ‘Always close to you’ (Viċin Tiegħek Dejjem), Manuel Mallia will be holding a series of meetings with the public in the coming weeks in seven different localities in the districts from which he was elected last year. Without giving details of the actual place where Dr Mallia will be meeting the public, the adverts state that two days before each meeting, “people from the ministry’s customer care will be present at the respective locality’s Labour Party Club to meet the public”.

Martin Sultana – a member of Minister Mallia’s secretariat who is coordinating the meetings – was not in a position to state where the actual meetings with the minister are to be held.

“The meetings will be held in the locality as described in the advert but I can’t tell you where exactly right now as we are very busy working on something else,” he told Times of Malta.

However, sources close to the ministry said that the minister’s plan is to hold these public meetings inside the Labour Party clubs.

The sources said these meetings are separate from the series of ministerial meetings currently being organised by the government called ‘Gvern li Jisma’ (A government that listens) and are a personal initiative of the minister.

Asked to state whether he approved of such meetings and that ministry officials meet the public inside Labour Party clubs, Prime Minister Joseph Muscat said there was nothing wrong that his ministers meet the public.

Pressed whether it was right that such meetings are held in partisan places and that government-paid employees meet the public inside political clubs, Dr Muscat said the ministry officials are not government employees or public officials but are members of the minister’s secretariat.

“These are political appointees and are not government employees. They are not there to do everything, but are attached to the minister,” Dr Muscat said.