Shipyards saga a case of ‘management by crisis’ – Dalli
Julia Farrugia
Labour MP Helena Dalli has slammed the government over its reckless expenditure and mismanagement at the Malta Shipyards, resulting in the re-employment of workers who took out an expensive early retirment scheme.
“Those who are running the country lack a long-term serious vision. It’s a management by crisis government,” Dalli, the Labour spokesperson on the Shipyards, told MaltaToday. “I see nothing but lack of seriousness and lack of planning. If the government had any good planning sense, it would have spent less and less money on the Shipyards issue.”
Only last Sunday sister paper Illum revealed that between January and May of this year the Government has spent €8.8 million on wages “out of which the majority of the funds went to those workers who had earlier benefited from an early retirement” – data which has since been confirmed by Infrastructure Minister Austin Gatt.
A similar saga happened years ago at the Public Broadcasting Services. Former workers who had received thousand in euros as part of an early retirement scheme, were afterwards hired to do private work for the same PBS.
The Ministry justified the €8.8 million figure at the yards by stating that “certain work at the Shipyards had to be done.
“The workers who were retained were kept on short contracts that ended as soon as the work carried by the workers was finished.”
The government is however still mum on exactly how much of the €8.8 million bill went to maintain the ex-workers’ contracts, despite numerous emails and reminders.
Over the past months government forked out a hefty €64.7 million to sustain the Malta Shipyard Early Retirement Scheme. Today only 141 workers remain on the official Shipyards payroll as 96% of the company’s entire workforce benefited from the retirement scheme.
Helena Dalli accuses the government for “throwing away workers’ skills”.
“The government boasts that it wants to establish Malta as the centre of maritime activities. But it simply threw away the skills of almost all the Shipyard workers,” she said. “Besides, if you just look at the track records you can see a pattern. In the 70s and 80s the Shipyards managed to make a decent profit. Things however went downhill under Nationalist administrations. Under the PL government between 1996 and 1998 the Shipyards deficit started to decrease. But things reverted to a negative trend when PN went back in government.”
Dalli insists the PN has never had a sense of goodwill, and never invested in new machinery.
“The workers were always to blame,” she adds. “Before the election the government promised that all the jobs at the Shipyards would be guaranteed. Once in power, the PN axed jobs. Many of the workers are still unemployed. Where is the workers’ dignity? As always, the Shipyards are yet again a pawn in the government’s hands.”
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