The Malta Council for Science and Technology (MCST) will be getting a new Board of Directors ‘in the coming days’, two years after the last board resigned en masse.

Asked by The Malta Independent on Sunday why MCST had been functioning without a Board of Directors for two years now, why there have been no appointments to the Board since then and when the new Board of Directors will be appointed, the spokesperson for the Parliamentary Secretariat for Financial Services, Digital Economy & Innovation replied that “a new board of directors will be nominated in the coming days, following an extensive restructuring exercise intended to increase MCST’s efficiency”.

According to the Government Gazette, the board was last constituted in 2016 by Education Minister Evarist Bartolo but, following the 2017 general election, responsibility for the Council was moved from the Education Ministry to the Office of the Prime Minister, where it is now under the cap of the Parliamentary Secretariat for Financial Services, Digital Economy and Innovation.

The board resigned almost en-masse prior to the 2017 general election, as is customary prior to such elections.  Only one member from the 17-strong board did not resign: board chairman MP Jeffrey Pullicino Orlando.

Pullicino Orlando, who was formerly an MP representing the Nationalist Party, contested the 2017 general election on the Labour Party’s ticket, but failed to win election to Parliament and, apart from being the board’s chairman, is also the MCST’s CEO.

The page on the MCST’s website regarding the constitution of the board simply carries the message “the new board will be nominated by the Office of the Prime Minister imminently”.  It has carried that same message since at least November last year, which was when The Malta Independent on Sunday last reported on the issue.

The MCST is responsible for a raft of things such as the Esplora Science Centre and the coordination of the Horizon 2020 programme in Malta – which is the biggest EU Research and Innovation programme ever with nearly €80 billion of funding available over seven years up to 2020 – and a number of research and innovation initiatives and projects.