The Tourism Ministry and other government departments are forking out thousands of euros to put up adverts on illegal billboards used by the Labour Party before last May’s MEP elections, Times of Malta is informed.

According to the law, the billboards had to be cleared from arterial roads a week after the 2019 MEP elections but many of them are still in place and are being used commercially, also illegally.

Last month, following questions by Times of Malta, the Planning Authority issued enforcement notices against the illegal billboards which were stuck to their iron frames. 

The PA notices warned both the owners and the advertisers of significant fines if they were not removed.  

The notices also stated that the Planning Authority would remove the structures on their own initiative and make the owners and advertisers pay for the cost.

However, this has not happened yet and most of the billboards are still in place.

A number of these illegal billboards have Tourism Ministry adverts publicising government projects and events.

Times of Malta is informed that the Tourism Ministry has issued direct orders to finance adverts on the illegal billboards. Asked to state why the ministry is forking out taxpayers’ money to finance adverts on illegal billboards used by the Labour Party, Tourism Minister Konrad Mizzi’s spokesman did not reply.

Neither did the Planning Authority, responsible for the policing of such illegalities, when asked to explain why it is permitting them.

The lack of enforcement by the Planning Authority jars with a similar situation last year when posters of the NGO Occupy Justice about the assassination of journalist Daphne Caruana Galizia were removed 24 hours after they first appeared. 

Recently, a court found that Planning Authority chairman Johann Buttigieg had breached the fundamental rights of the Caruana Galiza family when he ordered the removal of banners stuck to private property. 

The billboards used by Labour are provided by Aiken Services Ltd, a private company formed a month after the 2013 election.

One of its owners, John Debono, known as il-Gandhi, was made Malta’s Ambassador to Azerbaijan by Prime Minister Joseph Muscat in 2014.

 

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