|
Karl Schembri
More than one-third of government employees working with the Environmental Landscapes Consortium were investigated on charges of skiving, negligence and simulating illnesses last year, according to Environment Ministry statistics.
A total of 89 out of the 231 workers seconded by government to the private consortium in charge of greening roundabouts, playing fields and centre strips around the island were subjected to disciplinary procedures in 2005.
Most of the cases have yet to be decided – 13 were found not guilty and two of those investigated have been justified by the Medical Board – but the number of charges issued against the workers confirms the inadequacy of a policy to just dump redundant government workers with a private company only to remain on the state’s payroll.
Set up four years ago, the consortium was given 330 workers from the Agriculture Department in the grandiose Public-Private Partnership scheme. Now there are 231 left of them, with slightly less than half employed as “general hands”, 54 gardeners, 17 heavy plant drivers, 14 labourers and the rest foremen, technicians and tradesmen.
Yet while the consortium gets the manpower for free, the work is nowhere near that given by those employed by the private sector.
In February last year one of the private investors in the consortium, Adrian Zammit, had told The Times that their productivity initially stood at an incredible 10 to 20 per cent, which increased gradually to 60 to 70 per cent.
“The biggest problem was to put faces to the names because a number of these workers were employed in Libya with private firms while on the government’s payroll,” Dr Zammit said. “These workers on a daily basis abuse the fact that they are ultimately government employees and so cannot be hired and fired.”
Among the works carried out by the consortium, the Blata l-Bajda centre strip was turned into a blossoming patch of green, only to be destroyed by the government itself for the park and ride project.
kschembri@mediatoday.com.mt
|
