Is Darleen Zerafa actually paying for her course? The thought just occurred to me that she might not be.
Kif tista ma ccempilx?
There appears to be some unspecified arrangement between the eating disorders centre in Todi/Pieve and the one which the Community Chest Fund is spending Eur2 million on setting up in Malta.
The President of Malta (and chairman of the Community Chest Fund) and health minister Godfrey Farrugia visited the Italian centre – though it is not clear whether the latter actually did this as health minister. We know this from the centre itself, because a member of my international network of spies put in a telephone call to the centre and got talking (I speak no Italian).
The dottoressa who took the call said that there is going to be lots of cooperation with the Maltese centre, but it’s going to be a ‘stand-alone’ operation.
When the President, in the presence of the then prime minister and leader of the Opposition, launched this plan last summer, he had another (or maybe it was the same one?) dottoressa there with him, invited for the occasion and described by him as a “world authority” on the subject. She is based at the Todi centre.
Darleen Zerafa, salaried personal assistant to the First Lady and sister of the First Lady’s (and the President’s) daughter-in-law, who is also pro bono secretary to the Community Chest Fund (though that is misleading, because strictly speaking, her unpaid duties as secretary to the fund fall within her duties as personal assistant to the First Lady, who is the fund’s deputy chairman), is the person who has been handpicked to run this eating disorders centre once the charity fund has spent Eur2 million of money donated for the needy to set it up. No prizes for guessing how and why; it certainly wasn’t through an open call for applications.
So the suggestion that she has been paying for her course at the very Italian eating disorders centre which is cooperating on setting up the eating disorders centre in Malta, when she is the one who will run that centre, strikes me as very odd.
Why would the centre have asked her for tuition/course fees? That’s an odd sort of cooperation.
I’m not suggesting that Ms Zerafa or the President are failing to tell the whole truth about Ms Zerafa’s expenses. No, what I’m saying here is something else: that the nature of the Community Chest Fund’s cooperation with this eating disorders centre in Todi and Pieve needs to be explained clearly.
Also, why was that centre picked in particular, and why? It’s true that I’m naturally predisposed to be suspicious of the Italian way of doing things, but then, isn’t Italy itself? Hence their constant trouble.
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Oh you are so good. Tell us more.
http://www.di-ve.com/news/holistic-approach-treating-eating-disorders
“A survey carried out by the National Statistics Office (NSO) shows that 0.9% of the 2,008 persons interviewed were currently suffering from an eating disorder” So 18 people was the deciding factor in spending 2 million of charity money?
Aside from the fact that setting up an eating disorders centre is not within the remit of the Community Chest Fund, once set up, running the centre will inevitably involve significant recurrent expenditure.
Darleen Zerafa, who will be responsible for running the centre will, no doubt, be paid a handsome salary in recognition of the hardship she will have endured in completing her studies, especially if the meritocracy compensation yardstick adopted by PL in government is anything to go by.
Then there are the salaries of the supporting staff (whether family, friends, or otherwise) and operating costs in general.
Where is that recurrent expenditure going to come from? Is it going to be supported by the Community Chest Fund, so creating a constant and large drain of funds that should properly go to help those individuals truly deserving of support?
If, on the other hand, the centre will be charging for its services, then the centre should be set up as a stand alone self-sustaining project that should find its own start up capital without the involvement of any of the money that the public donated to the MCCF for totally different purposes.
Public confidence in the structure of the MCCF and the way it is being run has been badly shaken. The Community Chest Fund should immediately pull out of the eating disorders centre project, certainly as regards any direct monetary contribution. Failing that, the public would be justified in holding back from contributing any further donations to MCCF.
Gorg Abela has already badly discredited himself and the Presidency in light of recent behaviour and revelations. One trusts that he will now act to save the MCCF from being totally discredited as well.
Dangerous and bad practice employing your relatives within third party institutions or corporates. More so when pecuniary matters and decisions are involved. Collusion is naturally suspected and discipline adversely effected.
It is ethically immoral to have such a state of affairs in any serious institution.
Hsibt li l-president kien il-fula f’qargha tal-Labour. Mhux bhal ma jaghmlu l-labour li meta jkunu fil-poter dejjem jithanzru u mhux biss huma jigu l-ewwel imma jridu jdahhlu maghhom kull membru tal-familja biex igawdu huma biss minn fuq dahar haddiehor. Jidher li l-ktieb ta’ Makkjavelli jafuh sew, meta qal li kun hali bi flus haddiehor u xhih bi flusek.
Isn’t there any code of ethics which regulates the President and his office (like the Ministerial one)?
Strange,
two applications submitted for the works at the ‘centre’, both by Joseph Bondin.
One for Henry Fenech PA 01965/12 submitted on the 31st July 2012, and another one for a ‘Henry Zammit, obo the CCF’, PA 00770/12 submitted on the 13th June 2012, withdrawn February 13th 2013.
Who’s Henry Zammit?
http://www.ausl2.umbria.it/MEDIACENTER/FE/CategoriaMedia.aspx?idc=766
http://www.anoressiaebulimia.info/documento.asp?sotto=11&articolo=211
I googled “Todi/Pieve anoressia bulimia” and these two links are interesting.
By any chance did your international spy speak to D.ssa Laura Dalla Ragione ?
The President should stop this circus once and for all. There is only one conclusion left for him.
It is nothing short of official pilfering of the poor -box .
During a TV discussion programme today a caller said that an eating disorders clinic will operate from an ex military building at Mtarfa. Is this the jigsaw puzzle coming together? True or false?
That’s actually a legitimate question I would like to see the answer to.
With regard to the Italian way of doing things, I’ve heard quite a few terrible things on the health system from relatives living there.
Moreover, being a ‘dottore’ or ‘dottoressa’ in Italy doesn’t really mean anything more than being a university graduate. (And yet at least one Maltese lecturer insists on being called as such because s/he obtained an Italian degree – which is no great achievement given the reputation of some entities willing to loosen up with a few extra euro – but I digress).
Can you give me your email address please?
[Daphne – [email protected]]
It has just come to my attention that an Abela supporter has a perfectly improbable explanation absolving the President from all blame concerning the present charitiy scandals.
Daphne, please stop associating this case with EATING DISORDERS. It all boils down to MORAL DISORDERS.
Tsk tsk tsk.
“The centre will have 33 beds for this purpose, 19 dedicated to patients who are obese and 14 for anorexics and bulemics.”
That’s great, one big happy family, the obese and the anorexics all in the same centre.
Psychologically this will have a reverse action, pushing anorexics in a worse mental state by seeing their obese fellow patients. And vice versa for the obese. This is psychologically abusive.