NEWS | Wednesday, 04 March 2009

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Julia Farrugia
Customers were forced to face more hurdles at the Malta Environment and Planning Authority (MEPA) after the authority was still at a standstill four weeks into an industrial action ordered by Union Haddiema Maghqudin.
Last Thursday the strike entered into a harsher phase when the union ordered MEPA employees on a total ban on contact with customers. It means that anyone wanting to file a report or follow a particular case is not getting any help when they phone, email or personally visit the MEPA offices.
Speaking to MaltaToday, UHM secretary for public entities Josef Vella said the fresh actions ordered on Thursday were now definitely affecting MEPA customers. “I urge the management to act responsibly. Let us meet around the discussion table and let us solve all the pending issues.”
MEPA employs 420 people in all.
There are three major issues that have led to this industrial dispute.
“In the first case there is a health and safety issue,” Vella said. The union claims that MEPA employees at Hexagon House have been badly affected due to bad odours from the port area.
Then there is the outsourcing of certain work. UHM insists that a particular clerical grade is clearly identified in the staff’s collective agreement. However the Authority is simply engaging temporary staff to do certain work.
The third issue concerns MEPA workers being transferred from one unit to the other without any clear justification. “We want to know whether these transfers are related to the promised MEPA reform or otherwise,” the UHM secretary said.
Vella said the union has always showed professionalism in this industrial dispute, but he claimed this was not the case from MEPA’s management side.
“The dispute started in November. We had a reconciliation meeting with the Director of Works. In two weeks MEPA had to come back with answers. We gave them more time and we kept on waiting until January. As a sign of goodwill we suspended all actions. In January I personally wrote another letter to MEPA and yet again we got no answer. Now the strike will go on until all solutions are found.”

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