Heritage Malta pays €16,000 for nine bins as direct orders hit record high

Heritage Malta, which falls under Minister Owen Bonnici’s ministry and is chaired by former civil service chief Mario Cutajar, has spent an astonishing €16,000 on a direct order to purchase nine outdoor recycling bins for the Grandmaster’s Palace.

These direct order was issued to Spot-On Supplies Ltd of Paola and Malta Design. No details have been provided regarding the features of these bins that would justify a cost of nearly €2,000 each for taxpayers.

The bins are just one of an extensive list of direct orders from Heritage Malta in 2024, totalling over 250 with a value exceeding €3 million.

The primary justification for violating public procurement rules is the organisation of the first Malta Biennale, where most services were acquired through direct orders.

Among the most flagrant breaches of the law were seven direct orders issued to Sarah Lee Zammit through her marketing company, Nocemuskata, which cost taxpayers approximately €100,000.

She was tasked with a range of services, including producing videos, ads, and hosting TV shows, which are easily offered by dozens of other organisations across the island.

One of the Biennale’s major expenses was on marketing and advertising, with all sorts of direct orders issued to the usual coterie of companies including Marketlink, owners of a website called Malta Daily, Sour Punch, part of former NET TV officials Mark Grech and Anton Attard’s various businesses, and ICAN Ltd, owned by the CEO of state TV PBS, which also falls under the remit of Minister Bonnici.

Tens of direct orders were issued to pay artists participating in the Biennale, mostly foreign. While almost all commissioned artists were paid around €10,000, the Maltese artist Austin Camilleri was paid €30,000 for a controversial temporary monument called ‘Siggu’ placed in front of the statue of Queen Victoria in Valletta, also through a direct order.

No competition was organised before the Biennale to select participant artists.

A company called Twenty20 was paid €20,000 to handle so-called VIPs during the opening week, while another €20,000 was allocated to produce the award artwork for the Biennale winner.

The top executives at Heritage Malta are already planning to capitalise on a new Biennale and have issued a direct order of €83,000 to hire Rosa Martinez as its artistic director.

International art critics, invited over to Malta at the government’s expense, described the 2024 event as amateurish.

In a critique of biennales published in the UK magazine ‘The Spectator ‘, which called Malta’s first attempt at a biennale “rubbish,” “decidedly weird,” and “dysfunctional”, Paris-based art writer Digby Warde-Aldam described the event as a complete flop.

Midway through the event, Heritage Malta was forced to start selling entry tickets at half price to try to increase visitor numbers.