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4 NEWS maltatoday | WEDNESDAY • 2 NOVEMBER 2022 4 NEWS 'We were told to close an eye, sometimes both' CONTINUES FROM PAGE 1 DRIVING examiner Demetrius Psaila took the stand first, rec- ognising the accused men in the dock. Mansueto was the senior official, the others were clerks at Transport Malta, he said. Prosecutor Abigail Caruana Vella asked what type of com- munication he had with the ac- cused, besides receiving the lists of candidates from them. Mansueto had taught him about the testing procedure, he said. "From the beginning, he told me that there were tests in which you needed to close one eye or even both, theory and practical. I was starting at a new job and I obeyed the director. Setting the standard for testing was not my job. There were tests in which I did close both eyes," he said. This had happened several times, he said. "Mexxi ħa jgħad- du (get on with it so they pass)," he remembered being told. "As soon as I started, Mansue- to told me that there were tests where you had to let things slide. We were taught that way." "Who taught you this?" Caru- ana Vella asked. "Clint Mansue- to," replied the witness. "But then, when I started to gain more confidence, I stopped doing this and would pass or fail candidates on their perfor- mance." Asked about Zammit and Pace's involvement, he said Pace would hand out the packets of test documents. "[Pace] would tell me 'this is the one that Clint had told you about.'" "If Clint was present… he'd say '[candidate], qaċċatħa, jgħad- di.'" If Clint wasn't there, Philip Edrick would tell me to do it." 'I felt pressured' The second witness, driving ex- aminer Kevin Debono, told the court that he had been exam- ining drivers for five and a half years. In the past, he would occa- sionally assist with theory exams, reading out the questions and multiple choice answers to can- didates who had difficulty read- ing, but had since stopped. "Sometimes there would be cases where my supervisor Clint Mansueto or Raul would tell me to 'see if I could help' certain can- didates," he said, "I didn't feel comfortable do- ing this. If a candidate took an interest and showed me that he had studied, I would sort of give a hint, but not the answer." He would not help candidates who had clearly just turned up to do the test just expecting to pass, he said. Debono explained that some- times there would be candidates he was assisting who would seem to know how to read a little. Oth- ers would clearly struggle with reading. "Some of them would come and expect me to do it for them, which they didn't have a chance of me doing…" Some of the candidates he was detailed to assist with reading clearly didn't need help with reading, said the witness. "They [the accused] would tell me, 'help this one a bit, take care of this one. Don't thrash him." They wouldn't give a reason for this, said the witness. "I didn't like this, I felt pressured. I always use the same measure for every- body." Mercy with ministry employees and complainants to Castille A third driving examiner Mark Tabone was the last to testify to- day. His direct superior is Pierre Montebello, but for the eight years before that, it was Clint Mansueto, he said. Caruana Vella asked him about communications with the ac- cused. Pace would hand him the test papers every day, said the witness. "He would tell me what the work was… every day I'd get the packet of test papers." The court asked what Mansueto or Pace would tell him about the packets. "Nothing. He'd just pass them out to us." Pressed on this point, the wit- ness said that he would occasion- ally be instructed to be more le- nient towards certain candidates. "It would happen in the office. How do I say, not to press them too hard. Because of links to the ministry or to Castille." Only Mansueto would tell him this, he said. The requests "would not be regular", said the witness. "May- be two a month." He did not recall being spoken to by Pace about particular tests, he said. When Mansueto would not be at the office, it would be a normal day at work, he said. When he was, however, Mansueto would ask him "to be more merciful with them, because they worked at the ministry or had gone to Castille to make a complaint". "To be more lenient with them… It makes you disquiet- ed, but you'd try and make the candidates more comfortable by talking and joking with them. Maybe take them through less busy roads for the test," Tabone testified. Tabone also confirmed that it was only with respect to these candidates that he would inform Manueto about their perfor- mance. The same happened with re- spect to the "lenient" theory tests, the witness went on, which would have a distinctive mark or Mansueto would have spoken to him about beforehand. Tabone was asked what form the assistance would take in the- ory tests. He replied "you make the person think twice if you see them going to select the wrong option… most of them would be people who didn't have a good IQ or memory. Sometimes they would select options on the monitor without me reading to them and I'd think 'so they know how to read.'" Magistrate Montebello asked the witness whether he would do this with other candidates. "No, only for those indicated by Man- sueto," he replied. The case was adjourned to De- cember. Lawyer Arthur Azzopardi and Jacob Magri are appearing for Mansueto, lawyers Joe Giglio and Roberta Bonello are representing Pace. Lawyer Herman Mula is defence counsel to Zammit. Attorney General lawyers Ab- igail Caruana Vella and Gary Cauchi assisted Inspector Wayne Borg as prosecution. Driving examiners were pressured by superiors to be lenient and merciful with select candidates in theory and driving tests Teachers flag 600 cases of students with possible mental health problems TEACHERS flagged almost 600 cases of students with mental health concerns over the past two years, informa- tion tabled in parliament shows. Education Minister Clifton Grima said there were 587 case in State primary and secondary schools where teachers advised parents to speak to a doctor over sus- picions their children had mental health problems. He was replying to a parlia- mentary question by Opposi- tion MP Ivan Bartolo. A survey by leading psychi- atrists among 755 children and youths aged five-16 pub- lished last year had identified a staggering 62% being at risk of emotional problems and a host of issues which fell short of a mental disorder. In a first-of-its-kind assess- ment of Maltese childhood and adolescence, psychiatric registrar Rosemarie Sacco had said more youths need healthy coping mechanisms that can help them deal with challenging situations that will serve them into adult- hood. The study was conduct- ed by the Association for Child and Adolescent Mental Health and the Malta Coun- cil for the Voluntary Sector, searching for the prevalence of mental disorders among Maltese children and adoles- cents. It was supervised by Dr Nigel Camilleri. The results for the first phase of the study found that 60% were unlikely to have a mental disorder. But the survey found that 23% of 5-10-year-olds and 39% of 11-16-year-olds were at risk of emotional problems; likewise, 27% of 5-10-year-olds and 27% of 11-16-year-olds were likely to have hyperactivity prob- lems, and 23% of 5-10-year- olds and 26% 11-16 year-olds were likely to have anxiety problems. Driving tests corruption

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