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Kurt Sansone
Is it a case of selling the family jewels? Not according to Austin Gatt. His is a political belief that government should not have commercial interests and Sea Malta is no different to the entities already privatised by the State.
Government has no business plying the seaways and the agreement initialising the share transfer of government’s holding to Atlantica di Navigazione Spa on Friday signalled the beginning of the end of another Mintoffian-era creation.
“I cannot understand why we continue to sustain something that might have made sense 30 years ago but not in today’s world,” Gatt told journalists yesterday.
Barely 24 hours after giving a press conference in the presence of Dr Emanuele Grimaldi during which the share transfer agreement was signed, Gatt reconvened journalists at his ministry in Valletta to deliver the “facts” about the whole controversy that surrounded Sea Malta’s privatisation.
And the ‘facts’ come in the form of five booklets, or rather hundreds of pages that would make the Jerusalem bible cringe. It is Austin Gatt’s way of setting the record straight.
Dressed casually in a white shirt and jeans and speaking in his usual frank style, Gatt talks of a “strategy” by the former Sea Malta chairperson, Marlene Mizzi, to disrupt the privatisation process.
“The strategy to disrupt the privatisation process had nothing to do with the national interest,” Gatt says. He then resorts to ‘opinion’ to outline the way Mizzi’s alleged strategy developed: “First the strategy was to portray Sea Malta in a healthy financial position. When this failed and the accounts, which are public, revealed the precarious financial position of the company, Sea Malta’s importance to Maltese industry was blown out of proportion. This also failed when the Chamber of Commerce, the FOI and the GRTU said they were satisfied with government’s deal to secure a public service obligation. Then the strategy attempted to instil fear among Sea Malta’s employees over their future. But even this failed because we secured adequate safeguards for all of Sea Malta’s employees. Nobody will lose his job and they will retain the same wages.
“The last straw was when the Labour Party entered the fray with its opposition to the privatisation process only to be shot down by its own spokespersons who said a future Labour government would not re-nationalise the sea carrier.”
With such an elaborate strategy to destabilise the privatisation process, Marlene Mizzi must have had serious motivations. But Gatt stirs clear from attributing any particular motive except that the former chairperson was against privatisation.
That is Gatt’s logical conclusion from the ‘facts’ at hand. “For why did she stay on till the day when the memorandum of understanding with Grimaldi was signed?” he asks.
But there is another question Gatt’s facts cannot answer. Why did he appoint Marlene Mizzi in the first place? She was retained as chairperson after the 1998 election and reconfirmed after the 2003 election by a Nationalist government whose agenda included privatisation.
Gatt resorts to opinion once again. “I never disputed Marlene Mizzi’s capability as a chairman. I never had any clash with her over the company’s management, except when I reduced her remuneration as chairman. But she never told me she was against privatisation. I would have asked her to reconsider her position given government’s policy was in favour of privatisation. Should I have assumed she was against privatisation?”
This is Gatt’s defence for keeping Marlene Mizzi in place for all these years.
During the press conference the minister does not delve into the documentation presented to journalists. It is information overkill and few would bother reading through the reports, letters and accounts bound together like some form of university thesis.
However, he does skim over a couple of issues. Gatt says the last profit registered by Sea Malta was in 1997. Ironically, it was Labour’s last year in government that the company registered a profit of almost Lm128,000. After that it was a downhill ride for the sea carrier. Today Sea Malta has accumulated losses amounting to Lm4.7 million.
Gatt says Marlene Mizzi’s ‘rescue’ package in 2004 included among others a Lm3 million injection by government, a wage freeze until 2008, job terminations for a number of shore-based employees and seamen, and revised working conditions for seaborne employees. “And the company would still be making losses after three years according to the proposal put forward by Marlene Mizzi,” Gatt remarks. “Nobody in his right senses would have agreed to such a proposal.”
Marlene Mizzi’s proposal to change the working conditions of seaborne personnel is the very same issue currently being contested by the GWU in its discussions with Grimaldi.
But Gatt continues brandishing the facts: a letter signed by then finance minister John Dalli saying that government was in “no position to make the contribution of more than Lm1.4 million” for the replacement of Sea Malta’s aged MV Zebbug.
He insists Marlene Mizzi and the Sea Malta board had been informed of government’s intention not to invest in the sea carrier.
As for the valuation of the MV Falcon, at the heart of much acrimony during the summer months, Gatt says government was constrained to engage Bureau Veritas in September this year to conduct another valuation, which included a physical inspection of the vessel. Bureau Veritas’s valuation compared favourably to the agreed price for the MV Falcon between government and Grimaldi.
“Malta will be better off with Grimaldi around. This is a world-renowned company,” Gatt says, throwing his hands up in disbelief at how some people cannot see his point.
Gatt’s belief in privatisation is ideological. He insists the national interest, or rather, industry’s needs can be better served by a privately-owned renowned company bound by a public service obligation.
Emanuele Grimaldi assures industry that they will enjoy a better and more efficient service that will make use of Grimaldi’s world-wide network.
The sale of Sea Malta is not yet cast in stone. Its conclusion is conditional on a number of technicalities. But the real stumbling block is the deal that still has to be concluded between the GWU and Grimaldi over the working conditions of the sea borne staff. And there is no real choice; the seamen will have to adhere to Grimaldi’s conditions otherwise they risk compromising the whole deal and consequently even their job.
Gatt is adamant: “if the privatisation deal does not go through government will probably close Sea Malta.”
Over the summer months Gatt treaded a mine field. He did not come out of it unscathed, his popularity continues to dip. But now, with the ink in the agreement signed on Friday already dry Gatt has good reason to sit back and relax.
It is probably his chance to enjoy a moment of calm before another storm erupts on Tuesday over the increase in the fuel surcharge on utility bills.
ksansone@mediatoday.com.mt
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