Foreign Ministry spends €300,000 on refurbishing temporary offices

For the first time in decades, the Foreign Ministry is moving out of its iconic Palazzo Parisio premises in Valletta to Palazzo Spinola in St Julian’s, in a move setting taxpayers back €300,000 in direct orders.

The Shift is informed that the move to St Julian’s is temporary and that the foreign ministry will be operating out of Palazzo Spinola while restoration works are being carried out at Palazzo Parisio. It is not known how long the temporary move will last.

But before Palazzo Parisio could be refurbished, Palazzo Spinola had to be refurbished first.

Although the palace was used by an international agency until a few years ago, around €300,000 in direct orders have already been spent by the Foreign Ministry on the palace’s upgrading.

These include €114,000 for power and lighting installations by Key Contractors Ltd, €100,000 on refurbishment works by Neil Camilleri Ltd and another €40,000 on light fittings from Elektra, among others, according to the latest list of direct orders the ministry has published.

Borg’s personal photographer back in overseas action

In the meantime, photographer Raymond Attard is once again back in action accompanying the minister overseas.

Following a brief pause in travel duties following The Shift’s reports that Attard had been given a full-time contract to act as the minister’s personal photographer – setting the public coffers back €3,200 a month plus tens of thousands of euros in travel expenses – Attard was back in action last October accompanying the minister for a week’s travel to Poland and Qatar.

For that trip, €10,000 was spent on flight tickets to Warsaw and Doha, a sum that does not include thousands more in accommodation, meals and transport expenses for the seven-day trip.

Given a one-year unorthodox contract as soon as Borg took the helm of the foreign office last April, Attard had accompanied the minister on trips to Brussels, London, Turin, Milan, New York and Brazil in just a few weeks.

No foreign minister before him ever felt the need to employ a full-time photographer for the ministry. In the past, only Department of Information photographers travelled abroad, and that was strictly for activities connected to official visits by the Prime Minister or the President of Malta.

The Shift revealed that apart from his official duties, Attard also accompanies the minister, in his free time, to catch his best side at social activities such as village feasts in the minister’s constituency.