|
Economy shrunk
Stoking the flames of doubt over the GDP growth statistics published by the National Statistics Office, Labour leader Alfred Sant claims the economy in 2005 contracted by 1.5 per cent rather then grew by 2.5 per cent. He accuses government of creative accounting.
During the same public meeting, deputy leader Charles Mangion points out that the statistics were compiled by a Nationalist councillor from Sliema.
Shoplifting charges
An illegal immigrant denied refugee status is charged with stealing clothes from a shop in Sliema and is remanded in custody since he has no fixed address. The Libyan, Fouad Djellal, 26, and a Tunisian woman married to a Maltese, Saada Sammut, 31, are charged with the theft of over Lm100 worth of items from Zara in Sliema.
Sammut is granted bail. A third person involved in the theft is still on the run.
Monday, 20 March
Jailed for defiling adoptive daughters
The adoptive father of two Romanian girls is jailed for six years after being found guilty of defiling the daughters for seven whole years.
Magistrate Consuelo Scerri Herrera says she cannot deliver a harsher sentence since the Attorney General’s office had dropped the charges of rape and repeated offence, which would have carried a higher sentence.
The two girls were aged five and seven when they were brought to Malta. They told the court how the abuse started from the first day they arrived. The abuse started with their adoptive father touching them and gradually led to penetration. If the girls refused their father’s advances he would hit them on the head or slap them.
In court, the mother defends the father saying it was the girls who tried to seduce him.
Jailed for neglect
The mother of a girl who was found abandoned on a balcony in an apartment in Mosta, is jailed for 18 months after Magistrate Consuelo Scerri Herrera decrees that the woman treated her daughter like an animal.
The mother has six other children. The court hears how the six-year-old girl was repeatedly left outside the house or on the balcony for hours on end, without food and in the presence of cats.
Tuesday, 21 March
Tourist warning
Hoteliers present for the Malta Hotels and Restaurants Association presentation of the fourth quarter results 2005 lament the Malta Tourism Authority’s missed targets and the serious decline in tourist numbers.
Winstin J. Zahra of the Island Hotels Group and former MHRA president delivers a damning speech against the procrastinated reforms at the MTA and what he describes as a “complete washout” for tourist operators during the first quarter of 2006.
The MHRA executive agrees with a proposal to call an extraordinary AGM to discuss the ills of the tourism industry and what action needs to be done.
Education dispute
The education department issues a statement reminding heads of school that they are responsible for the safety of children ahead of the Malta Union of Teachers’ one hour strike scheduled for Thursday. The MUT interprets the statement as threatening the right of head masters to go on strike. As a consequence the union stops all communication with the education ministry.
Meanwhile, the GWU orders its members in the education sector to also report for work one hour late as a sign of solidarity with the MUT.
Wednesday, 22 March
Hazy future for cigarette company
Central Cigarette Company Ltd announces that it will soon be reviewing its operations in Malta since the parent company British American Tobacco Group is overhauling its European strategy.
The company in Bulebel employs 120 workers, most of who would lose their job if the company is downsized to a distribution and sales operation.
Manslaughter
Charlot Calleja, 23, from Paola is charged with drug trafficking and involuntary homicide of a young man who was found dead of an overdose a week ago. Calleja pleads not guilty to the charges. The magistrate remands the young man in police custody.
Libel damages
The appeals court presided by Judge Philip Sciberras raises libel damages awarded to Dom Mintoff in the case against MaltaToday eightfold from Lm250 to Lm2,000.
Mintoff had appealed from a magistrate’s court award of Lm250 in libel damages over a series of stories on the Bical Bank saga.
The outcome of the case prompts MaltaToday owners Roger de Giorgio and Saviour Balzan to set up a libel fund to protect the interests of the free press, freedom of expression and readers’ right to know. In a statement, de Giorgio and Balzan also call for a review of the press act.
This is MaltaToday’s second hefty libel case in two months to be presided by Judge Philip Sciberras at the appeals stage. The same judge had turned down an appeal by MaltaToday in the case instituted by Prof. Louis Buhagiar for which the newspaper was ordered to pay a record Lm4,000 in damages, the highest amount ever awarded by the courts.
Thursday, 23 March
Media visit detention centres
In what is a sanitised and highly choreographed tour of the detention centres, journalists are shown around the Lyster and Safi compounds in the first collective tour organised by the home affairs ministry. Journalists are not allowed to enter the quarters where immigrants are housed.
The visit comes 24 hours before the arrival of a delegation from the European Parliament intended to draw up a report on the detention centres in Malta.
Teacher strike
The vast majority of teachers and headmasters obey the directive issued by their union to go to school one hour late after a breakdown of talks with the ministry of education over the lack of action in a series of cases involving violence and abuse directed towards teachers by students.
Friday, 24 March
Disgusted by detention
MEPs pertaining to the civil liberties, justice and home affairs committee of the European Parliament express their disgust at the state of the detention centres set up to keep illegal immigrants locked up pending the outcome of their case.
The MEPs say they are appalled by the state the immigrants are in with one official saying he will be reporting Malta to the EU Commission for infringing a community directive on the basic treatment afforded to immigrants.
Floriana escape
Around 90 immigrants escape from their detention quarters at the Floriana police depot prompting police officials to make a blitz operation all over Valletta and Floriana in order to round them up. By evening the police report just four immigrants still on the run.
|
