Information Blackout On St Vincent De Paul Contract As Three FOI Requests Get Rejected
An information blackout is shrouding the illegal St Vincent De Paul deal as government is refusing to publish the contract or to name the consultants on the evaluation committee which gave the direct order the green light.
The government is also refusing to provide a list of taxpayer-funded contracts given to James Caterers and DB Group, two big business groups in Malta known for their political lobbying to get big government contracts, the latest of which was the €274 million direct order.
Lovin Malta asked the Department of Contracts for a comprehensive list of government contracts these companies and their subsidiaries have been awarded since 2013. But the Department of Contracts refused the Freedom of Information request.
To do this, the DoC invented a new excuse that goes a step further than an already dubious excuse used in the past for similar FOI requests.
In several previous cases – such as our request for information on Facebook spending by ministers – the FOI officers said the information would require too many resources to collate.
Now, the FOI officers are going a step further, claiming that information that is not already collated in a document does not apply to FOI.
“The substantive provisions of the Act apply only insofar as access is requested to a specified ‘document’ or documents, and not to any generic information/data that has not yet been collated.”
To arrive at this conclusion, the FOI officers quote Article 3 of the Act which states: “Any eligible person has a right of access to documents held by public authorities in accordance with and subject to the provisions of this Act”.
Therefore, an article that is used to ensure freedom of information of documents held by public authorities is now being used to claim that it is only already collected documents that can be shared.
This is obviously not the case as can be shown by various FOI replies in the past on matters that are less embarrassing to government.
The DoC said: “Where a request is made for a public authority to identify and collate data, and as in the present case, to give a breakdown thereof, rather than to divulge a specified document or documents, the provisions of the Act would not apply.”
This means that government has now given itself a new reason to refuse requests for information. If the information has not already been collected by the government specifically for a document, it can not be shared.
The decision is being appealed but is likely to be refused again as the government continues to ensure that the FOI institution does not work.
Meanwhile, the government rejected another FOI request for the names and surnames of the consultants engaged on the St Vincent De Paul, claiming this data cannot be disclosed since it is considered as “personal data”.
Asked for a copy of the contract, the government rejected it on the grounds that it is deemed to be “of a commercial nature”.
This was the same reason for not disclosing a copy of all the St Vincent De Paul board minutes where the contract was discussed.
What do you think of this latest FOI decision?
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