In an interview with our Sunday paper some months ago, European Court of Human Rights judge Giovanni Bonello had this to say about the role of Minister for Justice and Home Affairs: “Whenever I meet a newly appointed government minister, I always say ‘congratulations’. But in the case of Justice Ministers, I say ‘Lungi giorni’ (my condolences) instead...”
Bonello explained that as the person in charge of the law courts, the Justice Minister is tasked with bringing an “unmanageable monster” to heel. How much more impossible must this task be, then, when the same minister is also responsible for an equally unmanageable institution, the Malta Police Force?
Both these institutions have been in the spotlight of late, in what must have been a bad week for Dr Carm Mifsud Bonnici. Today’s edition takes a closer look at the issue of pending court cases – a matter which constantly features in surveys regarding popular concerns, and which remains the biggest challenge of an already challenging portfolio.
A spokesman for Mifsud Bonnici’s ministry outlined the various initiatives undertaken to address the issue, and initial indications are that a backlog of 76% of cases pending (in 2004) has now been reduced to only 50%: still rather high, but evidence that the Justice Ministry’s efforts are paying off.
Unfortunately, the same cannot be said for that other, sprawling half of Mifsud Bonnici’s gargantuan portfolio – Home Affairs. In fact, the news this week is that almost 1,500 of the Malta Police Force’s 1,600 members – i.e., practically the entire Corps – has filed a judicial protest against Commissioner John Rizzo, claiming to be owed millions in unpaid overtime.
This is a revelation that should really startle the Home Affairs Minister out of hibernation. The bone of contention is an agreement, dating back to 1993, which quite clearly stipulates that "payment of overtime at 1.5 times the rate of pay will be made for any hours worked in excess of 46 hours per week, when time off in lieu cannot be given.”
It is already questionable in the extreme that police officers are expected to work 46 hours a week; and that members of the same Corps have no right to union representation and collective bargaining.
In fact this would be considered illegal in most other EU states – although the Maltese government, faced with its own unique circumstances and (ironically) backed by the main unions, has to date resisted calls for a common European working week.
But to allow police officers to work such hours and then refuse to pay them the correct dues in overtime – for such is the claim of 1,473 police officers in their judicial protest – simply beggars belief.
Moreover, it adds a whole new perspective to a number of anomalies reported by MaltaToday in recent years. This newspaper has always been at the forefront with criticism of the Police Corps’s behaviour, and not without good reason: the police, in any country, wield power of a very emphatic kind, and with this sort of power comes also a debt of responsibility.
Sadly the local police have not always lived up to this responsibility, to the detriment of public security and peace of mind; and it is part of any newspaper’s remit to bring these and other issues to public attention.
Now, however, an entirely different picture seems to be slowly swimming into view: a picture whereby individual members of the same Corps are evidently so hard-pressed, so overworked and so under-appreciated by their superiors, that some undisciplined members may even be tempted to vent their frustration on innocent third parties.
Naturally, this overtime issue does not condone any such excess, and justice must still be done in all cases where such complaints are proven to be founded. But it does shed a little light on the extraordinary frustrations and bizarre constraints these same police officers are unreasonably expected to labour under.
On an entirely separate level, it also throws into sharp focus the current political debate concerning government spending. Can anyone now claim to be surprised, when the government resists calls (from both Birdlife and the hunters’ federations) to set up a Wildlife Unit to supplement the Administrative Law Enforcement agency?
If funds are lacking to pay overtime that has been owed for years... how can funds suddenly become available to hire more personnel under the same conditions?
Besides, the same revelation also makes a mockery of the present government’s plans to spend €80 million (we know not from where) to build a new House of Representatives, at a time when the country is evidently incapable of making even the most basic investment in law enforcement infrastructure. It is like worrying about the colour of one’s bathroom tiles, before even digging the foundations to build one’s house.
All things told, perhaps the time has come to divorce these two unmanageable monsters, so that maybe both will be given the attention they so desperately crave.
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