An amendment to the Local Councils Act will enable meetings to be held elsewhere other than at the council offices.

Moving this and other amendments to the law in Parliament on Wednesday, Local Government Minister José Herrera said this issue arose as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, which led to a number of councils unable to meet because of a number of reasons, including sick members.

Legal advisors have told the government that the law in its current state does not permit him to authorise councils to hold meetings elsewhere or online, the minister said. 

The amendment would allow councillors to hold meetings at places other than council offices or online, when meeting at the council offices is not possible because of particular circumstances.

The amendment, Herrera said, will offer certain flexibility while retaining the concept of good governance. The ultimate principle would remain that the public would have the possibility to participate in and attend meetings.

Local councils were temporarily permitted to hold meetings online during the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic, following a directive to that effect issued to all councils. The directive lapsed when Malta ended its state of public health emergency on June 30. 

Greater powers for director-general

Another amendment being proposed would give greater recognition to the director-general of local government, who heads the department but who currently lacks powers and must act through the directors he is responsible for.

Yet another amendment concerns by-laws issued by councils. While each local council can draw up by-laws, there is no standardised system for doing so.

Local Government Minister Jose Herrera. Photo: Matthew Mirabelli

The minister said the government wanted to create a legal notice that would cover by-laws concerning several issues, from trailers to use of facilities, participation in events, protection of public land, organisation of courses, and advertising of street furniture.

These by-laws would be repealed and their content would be placed in the schedule of the main law for the sake of consistency.

Another important amendment, Herrera said, related to the appointment of executive secretaries.

Currently, applications are vetted by a board and those approved are placed in a pool of available candidates, to be called upon when needed. But in many such cases, the candidates would already have found another job or say they are unwilling to work in the particular council where their services are needed.

The proposed amendment would empower the minister to fill this gap by extending the pool of candidates beyond those approved beforehand, Herrera said.

Opposition concerns about centralising by-laws

Replying, shadow minister Karl Gouder said the opposition believed in decentralisation - giving power to the people, so it had serious reservations about the amendment regarding by-laws.

Problems, he said, should not be solved by centralising matters. Councils had contrasting needs so they might need to have contrasting by-laws on the same subject, according to the exigencies of their locality. It was true that the system could be refined, but why decentralise one of the powers local councils still had, he asked. 

On the need to allow meetings to not necessarily be held at council offices, Gouder said the opposition agreed but this had to be in exceptional circumstances.

The words exceptional circumstances had to be in writing so as to avoid loopholes, he said.

Gouder said that the COVID-19 period was a relevant example of such circumstances. When the country was under a quasi lockdown situation, there were councils which met online and the system had worked well. Councils were now once again under pressure to return online in view of the growing number of positive cases.

Besides the regular council meetings, the amendment should also cover councils’ general meetings, Gouder said.

On the issue of executive secretaries, Gouder said the opposition agreed on the need to tackle this issue but the how had to be discussed. The concept of a pool of secretaries was a good one but it was true that there were problems.

However, these could be solved if this was regularly updated, Gouder said.