More than half the voluntary organisations on the island failed to submit their audited accounts for public scrutiny last year, according to a new report.

The Voluntary Organisation Commission’s 2014 annual review, seen by the Times of Malta, has lambasted some 400 NGOs for failing to submit their financial accounts in 2014.

Due to be published in the coming weeks, the report reveals that 47 per cent of organisations were not being transparent with their finances, the same portion as in 2013.

NGOs listed with the commission are required to give a breakdown of their annual returns every year as part of the regulations set by the Voluntary Organisations Act.

While the report does not give a list of noncompliant organisations, it does say that the majority had completely ignored the commission despite repeated attempts to contact them.

The majority had completely ignored the commission

Commissioner Kenneth Wain has repeatedly highlighted the problem and even called on the government to address the situation by giving more powers to the commission.

In a similar report published last year, Prof. Wain had said organisations were constantly ignoring the commission and claimed the legal avenue available to him was too slow.

The commissioner is empowered to seek recourse against noncompliant organisations by filing a complaint with the Administrative Review Tribunal. However, the system is so snail-paced that the commissioner was still pursuing legal action against six organisations for contraventions dating back to 2008.

The report says a group of legal amendments to review this system were expected at the beginning of 2015. The amendments are meant to empower the commissioner to take direct action legal against noncomplaint organisations without first having to go through the lengthy proceedings before the tribunal. However, it is not clear what headway has been made on the legislation. Questions sent to the Civil Liberties Ministry were not answered by the time of writing. This does not mean the commission is letting organisations get away with the lack of transparency. The report says it has started striking noncompliant NGOs off its list and some 15 organisations had their voluntary organisation status removed for not complying last year. This means they are no longer eligible for many government and EU funds.

The amount of financial information required depends on the earnings of an organisation, meaning the more money an NGO churns out the more transparent it should be.

Entities enrolled with the commissioner are divided into three categories: those with a turnover of less than €20,000; others generating up to €200,000; and those making more than that.

The report highlights the middle category as the main problem, where more than half the organisations were not compliant.

Although it was understandable that smaller organisations faced problems in completing financial records due to a lack of human resources, the same leniency should not be afforded to larger organisations, where accountability was even more important, the report says.