The recent spate of Din l-Art Ħelwa (DLH) articles culminating in DLH Executive Director Petra Bianchi’s appointment as Mepa Director raises many questions.

These opinion pieces give the impression that DLH is at the forefront of environmental protection. Simone Mizzi, DLH Vice-President said: “The state … needs NGOs like Din l-Art Ħelwa to lead in civic society, to question, challenge and educate.” Since when does DLH question or challenge? It didn’t even challenge the rape of Baħrija by the PN chairman on a Natura 2000 site! DLH spokespersons claim that DLH is at the forefront of heritage protection. Where was DLH at the Seabank Hotel sitting, the Palazzo Rohan and the St Paul’s Bay Dejma Tower Mepa hearings attended by other NGOs? What about the Villa Bologna Appeal and other Mepa hearings regarding heritage or environment?

More worrying still is the fact that DLH consistently rubber-stamps all the government’s major projects in heritage sites, starting with the St John’s Co-Cathedral underground museum, which all experts including Mepa and the St John’s restorer Sante Guido, declared a highly dangerous project. DLH has similarly rubber-stamped the Piano project, following ex-DLH President Martin Galea’s freebie trip to Paris to meet the great man himself. I note from media columns that in addition to Bianchi’s well-paid recent appointment, DLH council members occupy posts, some of them paid appointments, on the Valletta, Mdina and Cottonera Rehabilitation Committees, the St Elmo Rehabilitation Committee, the Climate Change Committee, the Majjistral and Mellieha Parks, Heritage Malta and the Mepa Board. Is it possible that no other heritage or environment group exists in Malta? Could it be that DLH’s silence on controversial issues has been well rewarded?

Looking at DLH’s accounts in its website Publications section, it’s striking that although from 2006 to 2009 Din l-Art Ħelwa had a very healthy income of €720,196, its expenses of €764,286 outstrip that income. This expenditure does not include operating office expenses (presumably including salaries) while DLH’s restoration projects seem to be funded by sponsors, as the sponsors’ page indicates. While it is true that maintenance of DLH sites contributes to expenses, isn’t that carried out by DLH’s handyman seconded free of charge by the government? Which leaves unaccounted the almost €150,000 attributed to ‘other expenses’, which peaked at €64,000 in 2008.

And what about €266.963 earned from legacies in 2007-8? One cannot help wondering where the money goes.

These are not the only worrying figures. How come the expenditure of Lm58,117 in 2007 translates to €160,596 in the 2007 records reproduced in the 2008 accounts? At the euro/Lm exchange rate of the time this should read €135,376 and not an inflated €160,596. Such a discrepancy cannot but raise eyebrows; after all, this is not a euro or two but a difference of over €25,200. Strangely enough, only expenditure is inflated, as income is correctly converted.

Does the Commissioner of Voluntary Associations not even glance at the accounts submitted to him?

James A. Tyrrell

County Antrim

NORTHERN IRELAND