The commission for disabled people has criticised the teachers’ union for its “puerile” behaviour, referring to directives at the Helen Keller Resource Centre as “insensitive”.

The Commission for the Rights of People with Disability was reacting to a statement by the Malta Union of Teachers. This was issued following a media report that the commission was considering legal action if MUT members continued to observe a directive that prevented them from applying a non-medical ointment on students. 

The article also referred to a jacuzzi at the centre, which earlier this year the MUT had claimed to be unsafe.

In its statement, MUT referred to a court decision on a prohibitory injunction by CRPD, which the union said confirmed its own claims about the use of the jacuzzi. Therefore there was no longer a need for directives to protect educators and students who used this facility, it said.

However, it seemed that the commission had not accepted that the MUT’s claims were upheld by the court, and provided the media with “false and conniving information to the detriment of the union and its members”, MUT said, adding that it will be holding CRPD responsible for any damage.

The CRPD meanwhile expressed disappointment at how “the MUT continues to deprive incontinent adolescent students from this ointment, which prevents skin infections, and moreover tries to twist the truth with puerile arguments.”

Several parents had complained that some educators at the centre had refused to apply this ointment on their children. The commission was in possession of photos of infected children as a result of MUT’s “insensitive directives”, the CRPD said.

It added that the union was being “selective” and referring to a separate directive that had been resolved, while continuing to insist that it had won a case which had not even been opened.

CRPD noted that according to a court communication about its request for a prohibitory injunction earlier this year, an agreement had been reached about the Jacuzzi by the involved parties, and the winner was neither the government, nor the MUT or CRPD, but rather the centre’s students.