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Karl Schembri
The running expenses for maintaining staff and the Brussels House will be around Lm3,000 a day. This was confirmed in a reply by the DOI to MaltaToday.
This newspaper has also learned that the official list of staff working at the Brussels embassy which the government passed to the European Commission contains at least 10 incorrect names out of the 31 submitted..
News of the incorrect list, officially submitted by Malta’s Permanent Representation to the EU last May surfaced after MaltaToday reproduced the Commission’s official list of Malta’s embassy staff published on its website, following the government’s refusal to divulge the names of individuals appointed to Brussels.
Of the 31 employees listed on Richard Cachia Caruana’s staff list, only 21 have been officially posted at the embassy so far. The other 10 include people who are still expecting to sign the contract of employment while others had actually turned down the contract following disagreements related to terms and conditions.
A Department of Information statement sent to MaltaToday confirms that the list “was forwarded by the Permanent Representation of Malta to the EU to the European Commission on 1 May 2004,” so as to “ensure that communication on the different policy areas between the EU and its institutions and the Permanent Representation is channelled directly to the appropriate officer.” The DOI said the list is “updated on a quarterly basis” although a disclaimer on the EU website says it is updated every week.
When MaltaToday asked Cachia Caruana for a list of the staff at his embassy in Brussels last month, the DOI replied on his behalf: “It is regretted that in the circumstances, the amount of work involved to gather the information does not justify the request.”
The government’s excuse turned out to be a veritable lie as the names had been drawn up and officially submitted to the EU more than two months earlier, even though it now transpires that the list was inaccurate.
Far from channelling better information, the list, with its inaccuracies, has created confusion among potential embassy officials awaiting their contracts. It has also meant that other European counterparts did not have any clear reference points for Malta in at least 10 different fields.
Some of the people still awaiting the final contract contacted MaltaToday to express their surprise at the fact that they were on the EU’s official list when they had not yet been assigned the Brussels job.
The DOI wrote that “a few of the attaches (Environment, Competition, Agriculture, Legal Co-operation and Education, Youth and Culture) appearing on the list did not actually take up the post in Brussels so “a second call for applications for the post of Technical Attaches was consequently published in the Malta Government Gazette and, in addition to other policy areas not previously advertised, also included the five policy areas indicated above.”
The DOI added that the process is in its final stages and the selected officers are expected to assume their posts in Brussels in September.
The letter says that the government “has no difficulties with forwarding their names to external entities for official and work-related purposes,” but the individuals working there “have a right to be protected against having their names bandied about in an inappropriate context, as is clearly the case with your article’s references to Ms Anne Marie Sciberras and Ms Nicolette Camilleri.”
The former was mistakenly identified by MaltaToday as the wife of PN Assistant Secretary General Angelito Sciberras. The editor of MaltaToday issued an apology on Monday but the PN media only reported Sciberras’s denial that his wife worked at the embassy, ignoring this newspaper’s immediate correction.
As regards Camilleri, MaltaToday rightly reported that she happens to be the wife of The Times correspondent in Brussels, Ivan Camilleri. The DOI explained that Camilleri “was selected in October 2003 following a formal selection process that conformed in every detail to the Public Service’s requirements for such a process. This call for applications was restricted to public officers and employees within the Public Sector. Ms Camilleri was the candidate who best met the selection criteria for this post in terms of her academic background and relevant experience.”
Meanwhile, the DOI has also confirmed that the recurrent expenditure for the Permanent Representation and the Embassy to Belgium will cost almost Lm3,000 daily.
“Parliament approved the sum of Lm1,026,400 for the recurrent expenditure of the Permanent Representation and the Embassy to the Kingdom of Belgium,” the DOI said.
The government has still not declared how much it will be spending for Cachia Caruana’s residence. Also, the government says it has not yet estimated the costs to install high-tech security systems, IT and telecommunications infrastructure within the building, as well as personal security for Cachia Caruana.
Cachia Caruana has so far declined to answer questions on whether government has any contractual obligations in the case of termination of his employment as Permanent Representative.
Although Cachia Caruana’s office “operates on the same lines as Malta’s other diplomatic missions around the world” according to DOI, the unelected Cabinet minister is paid over Lm2,000 more than other ambassadors. In fact, while ambassadors have a Scale 3 salary, receiving Lm11,329, DOI said that Cachia Caruana is somehow receiving a Scale 1 salary at Lm13,431, apart from a “representation allowance” of Lm2,500.
Almost half of the Lm18.6 million additional budget for this year will go for the nine-storey Brussels building in Rue Archimede, opposite the European Commission, chosen and pushed by Cachia Caruana himself.
According to an investigation by The Times Cachia Caruana’s choice was “by far the most expensive among the purchases made by the 10 new member states,” with Malta’s property costing almost three times as much as Poland’s – the largest of the accession states.
karl@newsworksltd.com
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