Maltacom donated Lm4,000 towards l-Istrina last Saturday as part of its on-going commitment towards this cause which, this year, managed to raise close to half a million liri for the Community Chest Fund and several other organisations.

The Lm4,000 donation is in addition to the more substantial amount that will be forwarded to l-Istrina later on this year, resulting from Maltacom’s waiving off all call charges and other fees related to the donations made by phone. In l-Istrina 2005, the figure was in excess of Lm20,000.

Speaking during the presentation of the cheque on Saturday, Maltacom chairman Sonny Portelli said the company has long been associated with noble initiatives such as l-Istrina, and is proud to be heavily involved in such a worthy initiative.

“We are a local company which has at heart the community we live and operate in. L-Istrina is part of our Corporate Social Responsibility programme, and we thank our customers who have joined us in giving a helping hand for this cause,” Mr Portelli said.

Maltacom was the telecoms provider of l-Istrina and the company is proud that its state-of-the-art system functioned seamlessly to the benefit of all Maltacom and mobile subscribers who wanted to make their donations last Saturday. In total, a total of 141 telephone lines were supplied on site.

Meanwhile, Maltacom’s web portal di-ve.com also played an important part in l-Istrina having offered an online platform where anyone from around the world could make donations. This proved to be particularly popular with people, especially emigrants, who followed the programme on di-ve, and who also made their donations online.

During the 12-hour marathon, Maltacom and its subsidiaries go mobile and Maltanet offered several gifts so as to encourage people to give their donations. These included go mobile MMS phones as well as Maltanet’s broadband kits, including modems and three months of broadband Internet.