Issue link: https://maltatoday.uberflip.com/i/1271696
2 maltatoday | WEDNESDAY • 22 JULY 2020 NEWS KARL AZZOPARDI YOU are not alone if you have not yet received the €100 gov- ernment vouchers as the dis- tribution has only passed the halfway mark, the Economy Ministry has confirmed. The vouchers, part of govern- ment's economic recovery plan, will be split into five €20 vouch- ers, and will be arriving via Mal- taPost. Every person aged 16 and over is entitled to receive the vouchers. A member of the household will have to sign for the vouch- ers, and will be allowed to collect them in the name of all the resid- ing individuals. The Economy Ministry said that 220,000 individuals out of 440,000 have received the vouchers. "Maltapost is doing all it can to maximize resources to complete the distribution at the earliest possible," a ministry spokesper- son said. The vouchers have to be spent by the end of September, a dead- line which the ministry said has been kept despite not all peo- ple receiving the vouchers two weeks after the initiative was rolled out. "So far, more than 4,000 busi- nesses are accepting vouchers and redeeming them through the digital app," the ministry said. It also commended the fact that businesses are launching vouch- er related offers for the benefit of potential customers. "This is considered very posi- tively as such offers will lead to a bigger increase in domestic con- sumption," the ministry said. The vouchers will be issued against a valid ID card number, and will need to be spent by 30 September. Vouchers can be transferred from one individual to another, with government not monitoring where and on what they are spent. Split into five, four vouchers will be red and one voucher will be blue. Red vouchers may be used at bars, restaurants, hotels, accom- modation businesses, while blue vouchers can be exchanged at any type of outlet that was or- dered to close at the start of the public health emergency. While no limit has been set on how much of the vouchers can be spent at once, monetary change cannot be given, and the vouchers cannot be exchanged for money. Government €100 vouchers Household distribution reaches 220,000 MATTHEW AGIUS A 37-year-old religion teacher has been re- manded in custody after being charged with breaching bail conditions imposed after he allegedly harassed a female colleague, send- ing her hundreds of messages demanding that she leave her boyfriend and elope with him. The man was originally arraigned on 15 June, accused of harassment and causing the woman, with whom he is obsessed, to fear for her safety. The prosecution told Magistrate Astrid May Grima that he had sent the woman hundreds of emails and also ended up send- ing emails to two of her colleagues as well as her boyfriend. Inspector Leeroy Balzan Engerer, prose- cuting, told the court that students at the school had also received emails about the victim from the accused. Defence lawyer Benjamin Valenzia en- tered a plea of insanity, telling the magis- trate that the man was not in a state to re- spond to criminal proceedings. The court, on its part, appointed a psychiatrist to eval- uate the man. The accused, who is from Xewkija, Gozo had been arraigned a month ago accused of harassing the victim and other teachers whom he used as a bridge between him and the object of his obsession. The advances had begun in January 2019, when the male teacher had started to flirt with his colleague, ending up telling her that he was ready to dump his girlfriend of 10 years to start dating her, insisting that she should do the same. Inspector Balzan Engerer explained that he himself had received nearly 500 emails from the accused, many of which made no sense. Asked by the defence, the inspector said that he was aware of the fact that the man was under the care of a psychiatrist. The alleged victim also testified, recall- ing how the man had asked to meet her in a hall at the school itself, where he had oddly only spoken to her about the curtains there. Shortly afterwards, he had asked her out, saying that he was prepared to break up with his long-time girlfriend to do so. The woman had replied that she was hap- py in her relationship and from that mo- ment on, started to avoid the man, not even speaking to him. She said he started to bombard her with messages on Facebook messenger, where she had unsuccessfully asked him to desist from doing so. On one occasion, he had invented a sto- ry about her boyfriend beating her. Many of the messages made no sense, but others scared her, she said. He had threatened her with her life at one point, telling her that she would need a psychiatrist "because of her boyfriend's ac- tions". He later went on to send her messag- es on her government email address as well as contacting her boyfriend on Facebook messenger. The harassment had reached a point where she was too scared to check her emails, she said. Eventually, the couple had gone to the po- lice to file a report. For the next year, things appeared to have calmed down, with him saying that he was seeing a psychiatrist. The defence did not request bail again and the man was remanded in custody. Teacher of religion remanded in custody for harassing female colleague