The country deserves answers on the now infamous Delimara power station extension and the way in which the tender for its construction was awarded. Yes, there are a great deal of questions being asked, but the answer the government should be compelled to provide first and foremost is the actual answer it gave the European Commission to its probing on the matter.

In short, the European Commission is requesting Malta to specify why and on exactly what date it decided to changes emission limits applicable to what is supposed to be a new and improved Delimara power station. It has expressed serious doubts about the process of procurement that led to the awarding of the power station extension contract to BWSC.

Such changes to the emissions limits, the Commission says, had not been required by EU law.

This newspaper has in the past expressed serious doubt, not only over the way in which the procurement process appeared to have been tilted in favour of one particular bidder but also on the less than desirable choice of technology to be used by that bidder and how the government could have possibly taken such a choice for the posterity of the country and its people.

Our stance has not changed, and the Opposition has been proven right at least as far as its central argumentation goes.

This week the opposition published the letter of formal notice sent to the government by the European Commission, and repeated calls for the government to publish its reply have so far gone unheeded.

It is a very simple observation and one that should not elude the government – the government’s explanation for its refusal to publish its reply is that such correspondence is kept confidential. The argument holds water, but it does not by any stretch of the imagination mean that the government could not give, short of publishing its official replies, the gist of how it had replied.

If there is nothing to hide, the government should explain. Anything short of that implies guilt and leaves a lot to the collective imagination

As our sister paper prodded on Friday – publish it.

A children’s prison

Kudos to the recently installed Children’s Commissioner Helen D’Amato for taking the initiative to investigate the prevailing practice of holding minors in prison. The practice is utterly deplorable and there is no excuse for it in a civilised society that holds the interest of its young truly at heart.

This newspaper had last December highlighted the case of a 15-year-old girl kept in prison simply because there was nowhere else to put her. The same circumstances cropped up yet again this week.

How many times must the same thing happen before the authorities take appropriate action?

This is not a question of massive funding, it could possibly be a question of staffing but that is simply no excuse. A line of argumentation doing the rounds at the moment is that the setting up of a juvenile centre for girls is not cost effective. What exactly is cost effective about the prison system? Nothing whatsoever.

Besides, where on earth does cost effectiveness come into the equation of how the country’s young – guilt of a crime or not? This should not even be factored into the equation.

The Children’s Commissioner is quite right in expressing “deep concern” over the state of affairs and highlighted how the imprisonment of minors is highly counterproductive, and does not fulfil the aims of rehabilitation which is urgently required for young persons, as she did this week.

According to the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child, to which Malta is bound, recognises “the right of every child alleged as, accused of, or recognized as having infringed the penal law to be treated in a manner consistent with the promotion of the child’s sense of dignity and worth, which reinforces the child’s respect for the human rights and fundamental freedoms of others and which takes into account the child’s age and the desirability of promoting the child’s reintegration and the child’s assuming a constructive role in society”.

These words are not chosen by chance, they are built upon past experiences of the entire world and hold at their heart the rights of and the nurturing of children, the world’s most important resource.

Once on the subject, the way in which the Children’s Commissioner has addressed the issue of corporal punishment is equally commendable.

As matters currently stand, by allowing corporal punishment in the home and in alternative care settings, Malta is in violation of the European Social Charter. The United Nations Committee on the Rights of the Child in 2000 and the UN Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights in 2004 called on Malta to correct the situation. Both had expressed concern about Malta’s ‘reasonable chastisement’ provision that allows corporal punishment, and both had called on Malta to explicitly prohibit corporal punishment in the family.

It is high time Malta fall in line here too.