|
Matthew Vella
The Occupational Health and Safety Authority has initiated proceedings against the developers of the former Holiday Inn Crowne Plaza, after stopping construction works on site due to safety risks.
Some 108 workers from the former Crowne Plaza – chefs, managers, head waiters, housekeepers and receptionists – were told to take up tools and offload stones, drop walls, and remove obsolete electrical wiring at the former hotel after government sold the hotel to Imperial Point Company Ltd.
The Crowne Plaza will be sold as part of the Fort Cambridge development brief, which includes the restoration of the fort beneath the hotel. Earlier this year a promise of sale was signed with Imperial Point.
Entrepreneur George Muscat, whose interests straddle Bay Street Holdings, Legend Real Estate and Tigné Estates, accepted to provide alternative employment for the former Crowne Plaza staff back in 2006 when government started negotiations to sell the hotel for Lm23.3 million.
The promise-of-sale was signed at the turn of the year after reports that Muscat had lost his Lm100,000 bid bond for failing to sign the multi-million contract on November 30, 2006.
Muscat had also been paying Lm50,000 in salaries every month to the former hotel employees until last November. With government intending to move ahead with negotiations with other bidders after Muscat refused to sign the contract, he stopped paying the salaries.
Only two weeks ago, Muscat told the hotel staff to report for work on the hotel site, turning chefs into builders and painters, restaurant and duty managers and accounts clerks in charge of plumbing and electrical works, and posting four chambermaids at the site’s perimeter night watchmen. Four other workers are believed to have been sent off working on another construction site.
Altogether they have been busy building walls, removing beams and wires, clearing way debris, working with jiggers to bring down walls, plastering, digging foundations and clearing debris – overnight turned into construction workers with no form of experience or safety training.
Four injuries were reported in their first week of work.
Yesterday, Alternattiva Demokratika chairperson Harry Vassallo lambasted what he termed investments minister Austin Gatt’s “hit and run” at the Crowne Plaza.
“While the government boasts it has made Lm23m from the sale, it has not provided for the fate of over a hundred families involved… Workers who have developed their careers to the highest levels in the catering and hospitality sectors have been transferred overnight into the construction sector. The guarantee of employment until retirement turns out to be a joke in bad taste.”
Developer George Muscat is expected to construct a Lm50 million complex for 386 apartments and a four-level underground car park. He will be required to restore Fort Cambridge, which lies beneath the hotel.
Harry Vassallo yesterday said the Sliema and Tigné area was already in crisis because of overdevelopment and overburdened by traffic. “Adding 386 apartments is clearly unwise… when the Tigné and Manoel Island project is fully functioning the increase in traffic is expected to lead to gridlock in Gzira and Msida.”
mvella@mediatoday.com.mt
More: www.maltatoday.com.mt/2007/01/21/t17.html
|
