Employment spike is justified, Wasteserv CEO says

PN asked for investigation into recruitment process after spike in employees in the weeks leading up to the general election

(File Photo)
(File Photo)

The sudden increase in recruits at Wasteserv is justified due to the increase of waste and other variables, Wasteserv CEO Tonio Montebello said.

Speaking at a public accounts committee meeting in Parliament on Tuesday, where he was called as a witness, Montebello said that the company needed to include a night shift and invest in new machinery.

Last year, the PN requested an investigation into the recruitment process of Wasteserv employees between January 2016 and June 2017.

The letter, signed mid last year, was addressed to Beppe Fenech Adami. It was signed by PN representatives on the committee Kristy Debono and Claudio Grech, as well as PN environment spokesperson Karol Aquilina.

Montebello said that the entity had a shortage of workers, and that he requested more employees to be engaged in 2016.

PN MP Karol Aquilina urged Montebello to justify the spike in employees which he said occurred in the five weeks around the time of the general election.

112 new employees were engaged during that time.

Montebello said that the industry is a very particular one as it exhibits a high turnover of people, since the work is dangerous, dirty, and difficult. He said that he is not privy to whether Wasteserv has asked employees to do work which goes beyond the scope of the company.

The company required an increase in employees for a long time, Montebello said, as the Sant’Antnin plant was old and used antiquated technology. The entity experimented in other ways to increase efficiency but did not have satisfactory results.

Asked by Grech whether there was a man power plan, Montebello said that the May 2017 fire created an issue which the company was not expecting.

“We needed people to deal with this, as well as other variables beyond our control,” Montebello said, explaining that despite the fact that the entity did in fact have a man power plan, the circumstances rendered it useless.

PL MP Julia Farrugia Portelli pointed out that from the data provided by Montebello, it appears that half of those who commenced employment at Wasteserv in fact terminated it, to which Montebello maintained that it was normal for the turnover to be that big due to the nature of the work involved.

The Committee asked Montebello to provide further information on how the workforce is separated, including a copy of the formal requests to increase the workforce, and a copy of the management accounts.

The meeting came two days after the General Workers Union (GWU) ordered an industrial action in Wasteserv Ltd due to unpaid allowances and other shortcomings related to the pay of workers. 

The GWU said that it had registered an industrial dispute back in August of last year for the same reason.