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Karl Schembri
The Sannat council’s executive secretary, Arthur Bajada, has filed a prohibitory injunction against the local council in a bid to stop its councillors from meeting to decide whether the same secretary should be sacked for refusing to send the council’s minutes and agenda.
In the latest episode of the Sannat council saga, councillors Emanuel Terribile and Joe Bajada, who were not re-elected, called for an urgent meeting to take a final decision on the employment of the renegade secretary who has stopped the council from meeting on various occasions. They also filed a counter protest claiming Bajada’s request was illegal.
Claiming that the urgent request was their last ditch attempt to make him lose his job, Bajada’s prohibitory injunction stopped the council from meeting yet again.
Indeed, while the Ta’ Cenc development controversy rages on, the council remains incapable of meeting as the secretary failed to convene the council members as directed by the mayor.
According to Terribile and Bajada’s request for an urgent meeting prior to the dissolution of the outgoing council, Bajada had also failed to table correspondence sent by the Department of Local Government sent last November, of which they became aware only mid-February.
Director of Local Government Natalino Attard had accused Bajada of “breaking the law” in failing to inform council members of council meetings, but since then he has blocked the council from meeting.
Attard also directed the mayor to discuss “this failure” in the first council meeting “so that the council will decide on the disciplinary action to take against the secretary”, but the secretary’s contract was still renewed by the local councils director.
Last year, mayor Carmel Camilleri was on the verge of resigning in the wake of what he called “threats and conspiracies” from his own Labour Party to approve the performance bonus of the executive secretary against his will.
The secretary was already warned back in 1998 by then Labour local councils minister Charles Mangion that he would face disciplinary action if he persisted with “behaviour in relation to the mayor” – who then was Roseanne Buttigieg.
kschembri@mediatoday.com.mt
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