The General Workers Union has called for a public inquiry into a conversion contract which it claimed will lose the Malta Shipyards €46,590,000 (Lm20 million) over two years. It called the contract “radically disadvantageous”.
The GWU complained it had been denied access to the shipyard’s financial information, in violation of the law, and had to carry out its own investigations.
It said the shipyards’ management had engaged a foreign expert to draw up the contract, but who was allowed to leave six months into his three-year contract without any conditions. The union said the shipyard would be incurring losses while subcontractors reap profits due to the way the contract was designed, and that the shipyard could not even cover the costs of the raw material and the subcontractors.