Dr Borg, who was addressing the annual general meeting of the Local Council Association in St Julian’s yesterday afternoon, acknowledged that the Opposition had agreed in principle with the decriminalization of such offences.

Dr Borg said that if the proposals in the Green Paper were adopted, it would bring further revenue to local councils.

Coupled with these measures, Dr Borg said, amendments to the Local Councils Act will be passed through Parliament by the end of this year.

He said that discussions were underway with the Opposition and many of the amendments submitted by the Local Councils Association were going to be incorporated in the bill.

“I hope we can present a package which will be readily agreed to,” Dr Borg said.

He said that discussion on the future of local councils, now that they have passed the 10-year mark, has to be intensified.

The yearly allocation for local councils has risen from Lm5.8 million in 1998 to Lm9.8 million in 2004, and allocations are now being made more fairly.

Moreover, Dr Borg said, local councils were now getting an additional Lm770,000 from fines, licences and other fund-raising activities.

The government also devolved 16 properties to 15 local councils this year.

Dr Borg warned that local councils will not be allowed to go beyond the parameters of the law. He said the department would take a harsh stand on this, even deducting money from the financial allocation when work done was not carried out within the parameters of the law.

The Minister also warned local councils to be more careful with donations, which totalled Lm27,000 in 2002 and reached Lm46,000 last year.

He expressed solidarity with every councillor, mayor and deputy mayor who has suffered physical and moral violence.

“An iron fist must be used against all those who obstruct public officials from doing their jobs,” Dr Borg insisted.

On his part, the Opposition spokesperson for local councils, Chris Cardona, called on local councils to be more consistent and continuous in their projects for people to be convinced that their local council was actually working for them.

He condemned the “barbaric” physical aggression on Labour mayors Tony Valvo (Xghajra) and Frans Debono (Marsa) and praised the police for the work they had done on these cases.

Dr Cardona said such incidents should not only be condemned, but should also be prevented.

He too agreed with the decriminalisation of petty offences and their transfer from the Law Courts in Valletta to the local tribunal.

Dr Cardona said this would removed a backlog of cases from the Law Courts and at the same time provide an additional source of revenue to local councils.

He said the government and the opposition were “very close” to an agreement regarding the composition of the executive of the Local Councils Association, as well as on other amendments to the Local Councils Act.

In this context, Dr Cardona mentioned, among other things, the term of Local Councils, and the time when elections are held.

The Opposition spokesperson said local councils had been affected negatively by successive cuts in their budgets within a short period of time, as well as by the rise in the VAT rate – 60 per cent of services used by local councils are subject to VAT.

Dr Cardona said that over the past 10 years, local councils had spent their budgets “in the best way possible”.

“If the same budget had been given to a government department, would it have been spent it in the best way possible? No!” he insisted.

In this context, Dr Cardona appealed to the government to set up a structure within the department to give technical assistance to local councils to be able to tap funds from EU programmes.

In this respect, there are various programmes which are not being tapped by the government nor by the local councils, he said.

In order to tap these funds, technical assistance is required, which is not readily available to all local councils unless they engage a private consultancy company at their own expense, Dr Cardona said.