Parliament extends injustices tribunal's term

The House of Representatives yesterday extended the term of the Injustices Tribunal by six months.

Justice Minister Tonio Borg said the term of the tribunal had already been extended by a year.

He recalled that a Nationalist government in 1984 set up the Commission for the Investigation of Injustices, which investigated injustices such as when people were unfairly passed over for promotion on unfairly transferred. Another two commissions were subsequently set up because of the huge number of claims, mostly going back to the days of the Labour government.

In 1995 Parliament appointed the Ombudsman, who took over the work done by the commissions. As in most other countries, the Ombudsman could only make recommendations for redress when cases were upheld, because that institute was not a court and one could not have a government over the government.

The Labour government in 1997 set up the tribunal, which was now winding down its activities. Dr Borg said 1,338 claims of injustices had been submitted. Some 1,000 were decided (most of the others having been withdrawn). About half of the claims were upheld and no injustice was found in the rest.

By the end of this month, when its term was supposed to end, only eight cases would be pending, hence the time extension.

Dr Borg said there were a few instances where redress recommended by the tribunal could not be provided by the government, on advice of the Public Service Commission. In such cases, in terms of the law, the people concerned could receive financial compensation which could not exceed Lm5,000.

The government, as well as individual, could request a review of the tribunal's decision in court and indeed, the government had done so in one case. Dr Borg said criticism by German socialist MEP Martin Schultz against the Malta government in this context was completely unjustified and the government would defend its position should the issue be taken further in the European institutions.

Anglu Farrugia, Opposition justice spokesman, said individuals had won a substantial number of cases before the tribunal and the government had the political responsibility to ensure that the tribunal's recommendations were enforced.

There had never been instances in an EU country, except in Malta, where claims of injustice upheld by a tribunal presided by a judge or a magistrate had been ignored by the government. He was grateful to Mr Schultz for the interest he had taken in what was happening in Malta.

Dr Farrugia said he had, from the outset, been unhappy that the tribunal would only make recommendation on redress. The Labour government had implemented all the recommendations made while it was in power, but only some 200 cases had been decided before the 1998 election.

It was not right that the government did nothing when the PSC decided it could not implement the tribunal's recommendations. The least the government could do was award the financial compensation as the law itself provided. Workers who had lost earnings because they were unjustly passed over for promotion could have been given an allowance to make up their losses.

Dr Farrugia said that after the Nationalist Party returned to power in 1998, some 400 cases pending before the tribunal were withdrawn because of threats, because witnesses suddenly decided not to give evidence, or records were suddenly lost.

Out of 1,337 cases submitted before the tribunal, almost half were decided in favour of the claimants and yet in 39 cases the tribunal's decision was not honoured by the government or its agencies.

In March he had presented a petition to the European Parliament about 19 cases where the tribunal's recommendations were not honoured. Since then there had been positive movement in several of those cases. Should the government show good will, he would withdraw the petition he had presented in Brussels.

Furthermore, there would be nothing to stop a future Labour government from reactivating this law with amendments to turn recommendations into executive decisions. But there would not really be a need for such amendments since the MLP had already promised that the recommendations made by the tribunal would be acted upon immediately.

But the most important thing was that the country needed to turn a new page and should rid itself of all political injustices.

Parliamentary Secretary Carmelo Mifsud Bonnici said it was the Labour government which legislated that the tribunal could only make recommendations on redress for injustices. Clearly, it knew what it was doing. This was a swindle. The present government could not be held responsible for what a former government had done.

While the law was kept unchanged, this government was twice extending the term of the tribunal to ensure that all cases were heard.

Furthermore it as wrong to imply that all the cases presented before the tribunal stemmed from alleged injustices by a Nationalist government. While no injustice had been found in more than half the cases, it resulted in the remainder that there had been injustices of public administration not political injustices. It was not a case of ministers having acting unfairly against particular individuals.

And it was worth pointing out that apart from other forms of redress, Lm700,000 had been given to claimants whose claims were upheld. It was only in 19 cases that no redress as recommended by the tribunal could be given. That had happened following advice by the Public Service Commission, a constitutional body which was superior to the tribunal and which the Labour government also knew about when it drafted the law. The Labour government knew that many people had no case but instead of telling them so, it had let them go through the whole procedure so that they could blame somebody else when their case was rejected.

The Opposition had long accused the Nationalist government of 1987-1996 of widespread injustices. Yet only an average of 40 cases per year had resulted to the tribunal and those cases also involved public corporations.

Winding up, Dr Borg hoped no further extensions would be needed to the tribunal's term. Eight years since its setting up should have been more than enough for it to consider alleged injustices over a period of eight years, he said.

Dr Borg also insisted that the tribunal was not a court, even though it was currently presided by a judge or a magistrate. Indeed, the law provided that the tribunal could be presided by a lawyer with 12 years experience, or a retired judge.

It was the present government which, in a white paper, was now proposing the setting up of an administrative court or tribunal to replace some 100 tribunals, commissions or boards which had some sort of judicial powers, such as those on VAT, refugee status, income tax or rents.

Dr Borg also defended the right the government had exercised to request a review of the tribunal's recommendations in court when it felt justified to do so. For example, he said, the government felt the tribunal was wrong at law when it recommended two forms of redress simultaneously, or when there were other forms of wrong interpretation of the law.

The motion was then approved unanimously.