The House of Representatives, which rose for the summer recess last Wednesday, has finished discussing the Malta Transport Authority Act at committee stage – talks that have gone mostly unnoticed by the media.
The Act provides for the creation of a new super-authority, the Malta Transport Authority, which will group the operations of the Civil Aviation Department, the Malta Maritime Authority and the current Malta Transport Authority (ADT) under a single roof and within a single regulatory body.
Looking closely at what is being proposed, one can compare and contrast the approach adopted by the government to set up the super-authority with its approach to the Mepa reform, although, of course, there are substantial differences between the new amalgamated transport authority and other authorities.
The two reforms have set new governance standards in that they have created a new generation of public authorities.
The first key element in the Bill envisaging the super transport authority is the creation of an internal audit unit within the authority, which is to be delegated the power to investigate, independently of management, any alleged irregularity or anything that does not seem to be quite right. The unit bypasses management and reports directly to the board of directors.
The internal audit unit is also given the statutory right to assess the risks connected to all major transactions undertaken by the authority. The risks associated to transactions or commitments beyond a certain threshold will in future have to be examined by the internal audit unit.
While certain authorities already examine major projects for risks, the new law provides, statutorily, for the procedure to be carried out with respect to each and every authority in the new grouping.
Overall, the creation of the internal audit unit brings the budding authority up to international corporate standards.
The second major change being foreseen is that the new law states that all individuals in the authority will be responsible for declaring any conflicts of interest, even potential conflicts of interest.
Having a conflict of interest is not a crime in itself but concealing the conflict and profiting from it are altogether different matters. The onus of coming clean on any such conflict of interest will be laid at the feet of the employees themselves.
Some examples come in handy. For instance, an architect working for the ADT who, outside office hours, runs a private practice risks a conflict of interest when, for example, the contractors working for the architect’s private firm wins a contract from the ADT for road works in which the same architect is involved in his capacity at the ADT.
The issue here is that it is not essentially at the head that such bodies or authorities can be weak, but also at the ‘man on the ground’ level, such as case officers, people who hold the capacity to bring an entire authority into disrepute through unethical behaviour.
In cases such as the driving licences, yacht moorings and karozzini scandals, for instance, it was not those at board level who were found wanting but rather the ‘men on the ground’ who did not declare their conflicts of interest.
The new law is thus establishing a principle. If an official were caught with an undeclared conflict of interest, the matter would be an infringement of the law on one level. But, on another level, it will be considered a far more serious infringement of the law if that same individual were to be found to have abused through that conflict of interest.