Gozo Ministry awards €80,000 to one voluntary organisation without calls for expression

The Gozo Ministry has “continued to [show] disregard for the law and the basic principles of transparency and fairness,” a 2016 annual report for voluntary organisations has shown.

The report, penned by the Office of the Commissioner for Voluntary Organisations, outlines how the Gozo Ministry ‘unilaterally’ decided to award €80,000 from its €90,000 Gozo NGO Fund 2016 budget to one particular voluntary organisation, without a call for applications. This effectively takes funding away from other voluntary organisations that require access in order to carry on with their diverse causes.

Also implicated in serious shortcomings is the Ministry for Family and Social Solidarity, after it entered into a joint contract, together with the Gozo Ministry and the organisation in question, failing to carry out any of the necessary due diligence on the organisation.

Worse still, the report states that it is “not clear” about what happened to the remainder and sizeable sum of €10,000 left over from the 2016 budget.

In 2015, the Gozo Ministry made headlines after it failed to follow procedure by choosing to award funding to one particular organisation. The 2016 report states that: “My report for 2015 already complained about the administration of the fund for that year and reminded the Ministry for Gozo, that recipients of the fund and of any funding scheme it manages, must be both enrolled with the Commissioner [for Voluntary Organisations, Prof Kenneth Wain] and compliant with the annual returns and annual accounts..”

The Commissioner’s report goes on to say that “unfortunately, this reminder fell on deaf ears in 2016 and the ministry continued to [show] disregard for the law and the basic principles of transparency and fairness by unilaterally deciding [to] forego inviting applications for the fund as was customary in previous years, and allocating the bulk of it €80,000, directly to one VO in Gozo without calls for applications.”

Voluntary organisations must undergo compliance procedures in order to ensure that funding is being used for its intended purposes. The Commissioner outlines the fact that the organisation in question “has serious compliance issues” with his office. This entails a backlog of annual returns and annual accounts submissions that have been outstanding since 2012. Commissioner Kenneth Wain also says that the organisation has problems with its amended statute.

“Apparently, neither ministry [Gozo and Family and Social Solidarity] considered that a due diligence exercise on the VO concerned was required including a simple check with my office before entering into the contract.”

“I wrote to the Ministry for Gozo on these lines, copied to the other ministry on 3 November 2016, without receiving any form of reply or collaborating with my request to oblige the VO, at the very least, to take immediate steps to become compliant with my office.”

In the light of the above facts, Commissioner Wain has recommended that the NGO Gozo Fund for 2017 should be suspended pending a National Audit Office investigation into the administration of the fund for both 2015 and 2016.

The Commissioner has confirmed with The Malta Independent that such a request has already been made.

Questions were sent to newly appointed Gozo Minister Justyne Caruana in order to respond to the above report. Questions were also sent to ask what steps were being taken to regularise the ministry’s position and to ask about the unaccounted €10,000.

Both years outlined in the report relate to the previous legislature under Minister Anton Refalo, who failed to be awarded a Cabinet position during Prime Minister Joseph Muscat’s second term in power.

Instead of answering the questions directly, Minister Caruana outlined how last week, “the Ministry for Gozo issued a call for applications for registered VO’s to submit their projects and apply for a grant up to a maximum of €5,000.”

“This call is fully in line with the Commissioner’s recommendations to ensure transparency.”

She went on to say that “in the meantime, the Ministry for Gozo is available to assist and co-operate with the Commissioner and any other entity in any scrutiny relative to the fund.”