Issue link: https://maltatoday.uberflip.com/i/1544871
10 maltatoday | SUNDAY • 10 MAY 2026 Administrative routine, editorial fantasy Right of reply from the Super- intendence of Cultural Heritage Patrick Calleja's latest attack on Superintendent of Cultural Heritage Kurt Farrugia relies on a familiar Maltese reflex—take an administrative arrangement, strip it of context, wrap it in scan- dalous language, and present it as proof of personal compromise. His conclusion is that because Farrugia's employment involved a loan agreement and reimburse- ment linked to the Planning Au- thority, the superintendent must somehow be institutionally cap- tive to the very authority he is meant to scrutinise. This is a dramatic accusation. It is also a profoundly misleading one. Transfers, secondments, loan agreements and reimbursement mechanisms between ministries, authorities and public entities are not some extraordinary inven- tion created around Kurt Farru- gia. They are part of the normal machinery of Maltese public administration, used repeatedly across sectors to allocate exper- tise where government deems it necessary. Such arrangements are not privately designed by the officer concerned. They are approved through formal ad- ministrative channels, under the responsibility of ministers, chief executives, chairpersons, perma- nent secretaries and human re- source departments. In Farrugia's case, the arrange- ment was processed under dif- ferent heads of entities and dif- ferent layers of administration. To personalise this bureaucratic mechanism as though it were a clandestine pact authored by the superintendent himself is simply false. More importantly, Calleja's argument deliberately ignores the one reality that actually mat- ters—the statutory mandate of the Superintendent of Cultural Heritage. The Superintendent of Cultural Heritage exists under the Cultural Heritage Act with a clear legal re- sponsibility—to act as a national repository for the cultural herit- age inventory, monitor the import and export of cultural heritage, monitor the conserva- tion and restoration of movable and immov- able cultural heritage, exercise control over archaeological exca- vations and monitor- ing, and advise the minister on heritage matters. That legal remit is not rewritten by an HR reimbursement line. Nor is profes- sional judgement automatically nul- lified because an officer has served previously in an- other state authority. What makes the personalised attack even less convincing is that it ignores Kurt Farrugia's professional trajectory altogeth- er. Farrugia did not arrive at the superintendence as an ornament parachuted into an unfamil- iar brief. He holds an honours bachelors' degree and a masters' degree in archaeology from the University of Malta, as well as a second master's degree from a foreign university. Kurt Farrugia, was appointed superintendent in late 2020 after years working specifically within heritage plan- ning consultations and national cultural heritage management. His focus since appointment has been the execution of the superintendent's legal function, not the bureaucratic plumbing through which public service sal- aries are processed. During his tenure, the superin- tendence moved to strengthen its human resources and widen its technical capacity, with new officers recruited in different areas of specialisation in an at- tempt to make a historically un- der-resourced regulator more functional, and pushed Malta toward stronger engagement with international cultural heritage frameworks and con- ventions, amongst other. There is also a further irony in the present chorus of condem- nation. The Superintendence of Cul- tural Heritage is not an opaque institution operating in silence. Its work is documented and pub- lished annually in detailed public reports that outline archaeolog- ical discoveries, additions to the national inventory, conservation monitoring, policy initiatives, international obligations, edu- cational outreach, guardianship deeds and the advice it provides to other authorities on develop- ment related projects. Yet these reports are rarely dis- cussed with anything resembling the enthusiasm now reserved for attack pieces. The projects undertaken, the events organised, the discoveries registered, the regulatory im- provements attempted and the broader institutional workload of the superintendence seldom be- come matters of sustained pub- lic conversation. It is almost as though the office becomes visible only when critics require a vil- lain, while its routine profession- al output remains inconveniently ignored. Cultural Heritage Superintendent, Kurt Farrugia EVERY SUNDAY AT 8.45PM ON