The rumour was that the government was installing a system by which the department would pay the first five cents of any telephone call but, after five minutes elapse, the rest of the bill would have fallen on the person or entity receiving the call.

During peak hours, telephone calls are charged at five cents per five minutes.

The hearsay was dismissed both by the Office of the Prime Minister and by officials at the Education Division. “We are installing a PABX system, that’s all... it’s unbelievable how this has been completely twisted into this story,” an Education Division official told The Malta Independent yesterday.

The new system will enable a more efficient management of the telephone bills, in that each office can now be monitored and billed separately.

A report of the calls made can be generated for each different section within the department.

Before this system was installed, there was no means with which to track down from which extensions telephone calls were being made.

This made it impossible to properly monitor outgoing calls. With the new system, exorbitant bills from certain telephone sets or sections can be identified and dealt with, the spokesman said.