I am writing to you in connection with the opinion piece by Parliamentary Secretary for the Rights of People with Disability and Active Ageing Justyne Caruana, entitled Firmly committed to inclusion and integration (TMIS, 25/10/2015). In this piece, Dr Caruana repeats her assertion that I was somehow consulted as part of the committee of 'experts' she set up to discuss the proposed disability hub to be constructed at Naxxar. I categorically refute her statement.

I was part of discussions held in early 2014 and prior to my retirement from public life in March of the same year. At the time, an almost identical proposal was put forward by Philip Rizzo (then an advisor to the Ministry for the Family and Social Solidarity). The meeting was convened by the Parliamentary Secretary Franco Mercieca and was attended by myself and Mark Musù, Permanent Secretary, MFSS.

At the time, as chairman of Kummissjoni Nazzjonali Persuni b'Dizabilita I had expressed my outright and complete opposition to any large-scale project that proposed concentrating disabled people and activities for disabled people in one place because, if for no other reason, a centralised approach to service provision for disabled people flies in the face of all the recommendations made in the United Nations Convention on the Rights of People with Disability (UNCRPD). My stand remains unchanged.

Furthermore, I retired on 29 March 2014 while Dr Caruana assumed her present office in April of the same year, thus I have never had any professional contact with her or any other government official since then.

It is indeed a sad, and tragic, time for the disability sector in Malta and Gozo when, in just one week, a Parliamentary Secretary can express her "very high esteem" for me in one breath while spreading shocking untruths about me in another; when a Minister seeks to discredit my legitimate criticism of a government project by casting doubts on my intelligence and ability to grasp the most simple of concepts and, above all, when the KNPD, which is supposed to be an autonomous national human rights institution and a champion of the rights of disabled Maltese people, sides with the government by expressing itself in favour of a project that totally contradicts the letter and spirit of both the UNCRPD and our own Equal Opportunities (People with Disability) Act.

Joseph M. Camilleri