Evarist Bartolo | Sunday, 12 July 2009

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A one-wheeled car in a grand prix

A car with one wheel, very little petrol in the tank, and a driver who has to run around all over the island to make sure that our cultural heritage is being adequately safeguarded and promoted. That is how the heavily understaffed and under-resourced Superintendence of Cultural Heritage is expected by government to carry out its 10 core functions according to the Cultural Heritage Act passed seven years ago.
It has a staff of only seven persons when it should have at least 30. Its budget is a third of what it needs. While starving it of the necessary funds government still demands income tax from the Superintendence!
With these meagre resources the Superintendence of Cultural Heritage is expected to act as regulator, taking on the building contractors, the MEPA, working with the police to prosecute heritage offenders, prevent those who would like to smuggle our heritage out of the Maltese islands while at the same time attend international meetings, initiate research projects, audit museums and heritage sites, compile a data base on our heritage, publish an annual report on the state of our heritage and advice government on heritage policy.
29 months ago the Superintendence of Cultural heritage embarked on the indispensable project of collecting data relating to key cultural heritage assets. We still do not have a proper national cultural heritage inventory. No work was done at all in 2008 on the Cultural Heritage Inventory Management System “due to the limited human resources employed within the organisation.”
There is no doubt that in the relationship between the Superintendence and MEPA, whatever the Cultural Heritage Act might say, the Superintendence cannot match the clout of MEPA to stop all the building developments that encroach and on our heritage and destroy it. The Superintendence has only observer status on the Heritage Advisory Committee of MEPA. No wonder that parts of our heritage are still being threatened and wiped out though despite its severe constraints the Superintendence did manage to stop developments that would have destroyed more of our heritage.
The Superintendence has had to take steps to protect St John’s Co-Cathedral, Hagar Qim and Imnajdra, Ta’ Bistra Catacombs and Ta’ Hagrat Temples from damaging developments pushed by organizations like Heritage Malta, the Co-Cathedral Foundation and MEPA that should have been more sensitive to our heritage.
The Superintendence has one person to monitor and regulate the movement of cultural goods to other |EU states and their export to the rest of the world. In 2008 this person intervened in 725 cases but is this enough to ensure that we are not losing more of our heritage?
Throughout last year the Superintendence managed to engage in research projects with the University of Malta and other European Universities to discover more of our Punic and Late Hellenistic heritage. It also assisted a number of young scholars in their post-graduate research.
The Superintendence also has a duty to monitor the effective application of the EU Directive on the Return of Cultural Objects Unlawfully Removed from member States. While countries like Greece are vociferous in reclaiming their heritage pillaged by the British during the last two centuries, Malta seems to accept meekly similar pillage and consider it irreversible.
We are already more than half-way through 2009 and the Superintendence has still to publish the State of the Heritage Report for 2008. This was promised in early 2009 and was intended to provide a full review of the local trends in cultural heritage management for the whole year and also compare it to the reports for 2006 and 2007. When is this report for 2008 going to be published?
Apart from resourcing the Superintendence of Cultural Heritage adequately if it is to be put in the position to carry out its essential functions, we should also change the present set up of all regulatory bodies in Malta. Most of them are weak and ineffective because they fall under the government they are meant to regulate. We should seriously consider transferring these regulatory bodies to the President of the Republic voted for by at least two thirds of the members of parliament and mayors of local councils meeting in a national assembly.

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