Our lives and most of what we do are impinged on in ways we probably never imagined by one quango or another. Transport, telecommunications, environment and planning, water and electricity are all essential services that affect our quality of life and are run by this form of administration.
The perception of many towards quangos such as Mepa, the MMA and the ADT has been one of a lack of efficiency and transparency, beleaguered by maladministration and wrong-doing. We have paid dearly for the dubious honour of having such quangos rule over us. In the case of Mepa there were accusations coming from its own internal auditor who has called some of its policies as "recipes for abuse". It was such a big mess that the Prime Minister had to take this authority under his wing.
There were then those who were asked for cash in order to obtain their driving licence or who were victims of the falsification of theory examination certificates supposedly issued by the ADT. And those who were operating boats with a regular licence found out that one-fifth of boat owners had fake licences obtained through bribes handed to MMA officials. All these citizens rightly point out that, despite what is said about having a "people's government", the country is increasingly administered by unaccountable, secretive - or maybe not so secretive - crony networks.
Who are the quangocrats then? Certainly not the people of merit they are supposed to be. And, yet, the government continues to appoint more of his own on these quangos in spite of the pre-electoral promise that, for transparency's sake, a call for applications will be issued. It is not only our taxes that have taken a hit at the mercy of quangos; our democratic rights have also been depleted. The unelected officials heading quangos are not accountable to the public, yet, they still wield large sums of public money and lots of power.
Nine years ago (The Times, July 12, 2000) I had written a piece here titled Menace In Quangoland, a critique of the mushrooming of quangos and the concomitant expenses the taxpayer is burdened with. I had compared the wages of directors on quangos to those in the civil service structure and asked - in spite of the fact that we were paying much more for the former - whether we were getting a better service. Now that nearly a decade has passed and that we have more experience of these set-ups, I can reiterate that, no, the citizens paying for these quangos are, in many cases, not getting a better service.
Last week, the two quangos which messed up most (the ADT and the MMA) were merged, along with the civil aviation department and, to a certain extent, the Malta Freeport Corporation, to form a superquango: the Malta Transport (Regulatory) Authority. If the ADT and the MMA, separately, have lost their credibility and accountability, now that they are going to be as one unit together with a third and fourth entity - thus the one board has to keep a watch on four authorities - isn't it going to be more difficult to not let things slip up as they did when the board had the responsibility for only one entity? Is there not going to be less accountability? Things went wrong for the taxpayers when each entity had its own overseer; I hate to think what will happen now with the four units put together.
The minister said that all these entities formed part of his portfolio and, thus, it was easier to bring them together under one authority than to organise them under one ministry. He said that in this last year he found it hard to coordinate the work of the different authorities, hence the birth of the superquango with executive and regulatory powers. Will the different units not be more difficult to coordinate as one big entitity than they were as separate entities? The minister thinks not. And what happens if the Prime Minister wants to shuffle the ministries and decides that he doesn't want the four areas under one ministry? Will the super authority be reversed and divided into four authorities again? No answer.
I doubt that a larger quango will have more impact. The government runs rings around quangos when it wants to, after all it sets the remit. So I regard the minister's declaration that he couldn't cope with the four entities separately rather cynically; but even if this were true, how is the government supposed to deal with the four entities put together? How, on this much larger scale, will the basic principles of transparency and democratic accountability be met?
Has anyone conducted a study of our quangos and evaluated them? This job surely needs doing but I doubt that the government will ever change the status quo: Quangos are much too important as a tool of patronage and recent political history has shown us that the present government has survived also because of the patronage it bestows on those who otherwise could not occupy certain positions. That many officials are in positions they do not merit to be in was even stated in the report commissioned by the PN after it lost the 2004 EP election. Now, where did I hear the word meritocracy last?
Dr Dalli is a Labour member of Parliament.