Home Affairs Minister Byron Camilleri said on Thursday that he “respects” a court judgement that found that a government agency under his control had ‘manipulated' voters to change their addresses to uninhabitable social housing apartments. 

Following a case filed by the Nationalist Party in what it had described as a case of gerrymandering, a court ruled on Wednesday that the Electoral Commission must change those voters’ addresses back and revise the electoral register accordingly. 

The magistrate also found that Identità agency officials had met the people at the uninhabitable housing block and helped them change their ID card details. 

This had occurred, the court said, under the instruction of Malita Investments CEO Jennifer Falzon.  The government has a majority stake in Malita Investments and the company acts as the landlord of the building. 

Falzon denies ordering changes and has made a report to police.

Answering questions on Thursday, Camilleri, who is politically responsible for Identità said he “respects” the judgement and would urge the agency to take any lessons that could be learned from it. 

“If there are lessons to be learned, then Identità, once the judgement is formally communicated to it, should examine it,” he said. 

However, the minister also defended the presence of Identità employees at the Siġġiewi site and insisted that it was not their job to go around checking the state of every single apartment. 

“The workers didn’t go checking apartment by apartment, from what I am informed, they stayed downstairs, and they received applications from the people who went there. They didn’t force anybody to go there. They didn’t go round every apartment one by one and I don’t think it's their job to do so,” he said, adding that it was standard practice for workers to visit a site where a large number of people required their services. 

“Identità workers went on site, as they do to other places, so it’s not the case that they did something that they wouldn’t have otherwise done somewhere else,” Camilleri continued. 

“When you are dealing with a large number of people I think it's better to send a small group of people to work on-site instead of sending a big group of people to (Identità  offices at) Blata l-Bajda, with all of its consequences.”

Similar services are offered in places such as nursing homes, Camilleri said, where workers go on-site and work on several applications for the residents there. 

The minister also accused the PN of instituting the case because it is against social housing projects. 

“I think the PN has twice hurt the people who are going to live in this block, once when it objected to it being built and now a second time through this legalism, by saying that they should not vote in this locality,” he said. 

“It is almost as if they are telling these people that they are not welcome in Siġġiewi and should not vote there."

The PN has previously said its request was not to strike these people off the electoral register, since the PN defended people's right to vote, but for them to vote for the council where they were registered before the switch.

Siġġiewi it a battleground locality in the forthcoming local elections, which are often won by slim margins.  The electoral law says voters must be resident in the place where they normally live.  

Magistrate Donatella Frendo Dimech was ruling in some of the first of 99 cases filed by the PN .

She said the Identità official on site, signing as witness to signature, stated that the applicants lived there when “it was manifestly obvious that the block had no residents.”