Culture Minister Owen Bonnici said that no appeals had been received by the Public Contracts Appeals Board over the tender for the Muża project, in which the Fine Arts Museum is to be relocated to the Auberge d’Italie and become an interactive museum.
Dr Bonnici was replying to remarks made by Culture Shadow Minister Francis Zammit Dimech who referred to last Saturday’s Talking Point by Alex Torpiano in Times of Malta, entitled ‘Best design is dismissed’.
Dr Bonnici said he had talked to Prof Torpiano who had said the tender as presented by the Contracts Department could have put artistic contractors at a disadvantage.
He declared he had remained aloof of the tendering process.
The minister said that cultural heritage in Malta was passing through a Renaissance with the many projects undertaken during recent years.
He mentioned the notaries and aural archives which he said celebrated Malta’s social history and everyday life in times gone by.
Dr Bonnici spoke at length on the Superintendence of Cultural Heritage and denied there was an overemphasis on archaeolo-gical excavations.
He said the superintendence had heavily reduced and conditioned the area for development near the Ta’ Ħaġrat Temples.
It had carried on with the development of the national archives and 389 fortifications built between the 16th and 18th centuries had been catalogued.
Some 463 monuments had already been catalogued with another 500 new schedules to be added this year.
This included chapels and niches of historic value.
In 2013, the superintendence held 20 per cent more consultations, which totalled 560, giving directives or recommendations to eliminate or mitigate im-pact from development on the country’s heritage.
Among the many archaeological works conducted by the superintendence was an excavation project that included Heritage Malta and the Universities of Malta, Cambridge and Belfast.
On Heritage Malta, he said the Tarxien temples and the Ħal Saflieni Hypogeum would be closed to the public for maintenance works, including the erection of a canopy shelter at Tarxien.
He said talks were underway with the Sovereign Military Order of Malta to celebrate the 450th anniversary of the Great Siege of 1565 next year.
The Fort St Elmo and Fort St Angelo experiences were to be finalised by next year and the number of staff would be increased, resulting in an extra expenditure of €1 million in salaries and wages.
Dr Bonnici also praised workers from the restoration department who were instrumental in carrying out a number of restoration projects including on the St John Co-Cathedral’s façade, a historic wall at Dock Number One in Cospicua and other works in various villages.
The minister said it was time that the Malta Dockyard formed part of the national heritage.
Earlier, Dr Zammit Dimech said the national heritage and its protection relied on the work not only of national agencies but also of NGOs, which had been granted guardianship deeds by the previous government, renewed by the current one.
This gave recognition to the very valuable work carried out by committed citizens for the benefit of the community.
He expressed concern that the autonomy of the board and management of Heritage Malta were tainted by political interference.
He warned that even within the regulatory bodies such as Mepa and the Superintendence, such interests could lead to a devaluation of the cultural heritage and render it subservient to pro-posed development.
Dr Zammit Dimech raised several questions about the disqualification of a competition entry for the Muża national gallery design contest.
He was referring to Prof Tor-piano’s article, which explained that the expression of interest document submitted by a multidisciplinary team which he represented, TBA Periti, had been disqualified for puerile, administrative bureaucratic reasons.
Answers needed to be given, said Dr Zammit Dimech, because he found it hard to believe that the reasons for the disqualification came from Heritage Malta.
The national heritage and its protection relied on the work not only of national agencies but also of NGOs
Or was the submission disqualified by the Contracts Department? How could one reconcile the disqualification of a design based on such trivial reasons as the length of the report, the non-submission of an empty form, and worst of all, that TBA Periti did not provide a letter of referral from clients of their team members, when these design experts were world-renowned.
Did the government seriously expect TBA Periti to ask such entities as Metaphor, Local Projects and Hilson Moran (who were part of the team submitting the design) for a referral letter when the work carried out was on the Internet for all to see?
On the Heritage Malta estimates, he said it was important to know the time frames for the projects listed and expressed concern that work at the Tarxien temples, the St Paul’s catacombs at the Roman baths at Għajn Tuffieħa, which had been started by the previous administration, seem to have fallen behind.
Dr Zammit Dimech said Heritage Malta should be more pro-active with educational institutions such as Mcast and the University of Malta, as well as with foreign universities, because there was now a lacuna in restoration since the undergraduate course had been removed.
There also needed to be more synergy between culture and tourism, he said.
There was a difference of almost €1 million on wages and salaries for Heritage Malta.
It could be that the projection was an estimate, but the gap was too wide not to demand an explanation.
The amount that was being spent on events seemed to have gone down. Did this mean that certain planned events had not been held and if so, why not?
Parliamentary Secretary Ian Borg said some €1.8 million of the €22 million value of a project for the conservation of archaeological remains at Ġgantija, Tarxien and St Paul’s Catacombs, and restoration of Fort St Angelo, had been paid by March 2013.
In view of the size of this investment and of the fact that the 2007-2013 programming period was drawing to a close, this was indeed worrying, he said.
Nevertheless, in just 15 months the PL administration had succeeded in paying off a further €4.5 million.
The procurement of works at Fort St Angelo remained pending, and work on other projects was also lagging behind.
These facts showed a lack of planning and exerted further pressure on the present administration to meet tight deadlines.
A failure to adhere to deadlines had led to a rush to ensure that no funds were lost in the long term.
After all, the government would still be obliged to pay for all concluded projects, as there was a contractual obligation with the contractors, he said.
Dr Borg said that work had in the meantime carried on at Ġgantija and at St Paul’s Catacombs, in order to make 24 rather than just two catacombs accessible as well as to improve physical access.
For the 2014-2020 programming period his colleagues had put forward various proposals on how Malta’s national heritage could be enhanced and improved, and around €200 million would be allocated to conservation in all.
Nationalist MPs Frederick Azzopardi and Claudette Buttigieg also contributed to the debate. The financial estimates were approved by 34 votes for and 26 against after a division.
By a similar margin, the House also approved the financial estimates of the Malta Tourism Authority and the Water Services Corporation.