Labour MPs grill Fenech Adami over ‘recommended’ constituents for Wasteserv jobs

To-and-fro between Labour MPs and Beppe Fenech Adami delivers little beyond what was originally published in MaltaToday

Nationalist MP Beppe Fenech Adami
Nationalist MP Beppe Fenech Adami

Nationalist MP Beppe Fenech Adami denied having committed anything wrong by recommending a constituent for a job at the national waste agency Wasteserv during the time the Nationalist Party was in government.

Beppe Fenech Adami was being questioned inside the public accounts committee over emails he sent to Wasteserv officials, requesting a job placement for someone who had got in touch with him. The emails date back to before the 2013 election, when the Nationalist Party was then in power.

“I have never had any power to put people in any job… I could only help people. It was all regular,” Fenech Adami said, fending off questions from Labour MP Robert Abela.

[READ] Emails from 2009-2013 reveal ministers and MPs directly recruiting ‘recommended’ constituents inside Wasteserv

But the grilling produced nothing new beyond what was published originally in MaltaToday, as Labour MPs laboured the point that Nationalist MPs had been actively seeking favours for constituents.     

Fenech Adami, who stepped down as PAC chairman temporarily so as to be able to testify, said that after the emails were published in MaltaToday, the person in question had called him to tell him she was never contacted by the waste agency for a job.

Emails published by MaltaToday dating from 2009 right up to election eve on 21 February 2013, shed details on the daily efforts of ministers, government MPs, civil servants, party candidates and directors of national waste agency Wasteserv to favour voters for job postings with direct placements.

Emails from June 2010 show the resources ministry’s secretariat actually forwarding a list of 18 candidates to be interviewed for the post of waste sorters at the Sant Antnin plant. Not only does the ministerial secretariat take an interest in job interviews: in December 2010, Beppe Fenech Adami, then a newly-elected MP, also petitions Ray Bezzina, the minister’s aide, to include other candidates for job placements. He uses his personal email, not his parliament server email. “Days ago you told me that Wasteserv needed people for secretarial posts,” he tells CEO Vincent Magri, requesting him to call in a recommended applicant for the post.

Fenech Adami was intent in turning the tables against Labour MP Robert Abela, by reminding him that it was the Labour government that employed over 129 waste sorters in the run-up to the June 2017 election.

“It’s an MP’s job to carry out this function,” Fenech Adami said, referring to his role as an MP interlocuting for constituents.

“My job was that… a person had been chosen to work at Wasteserv, someone else felt this person should not get this job because of his personal transportation problem… I informed Wasteserv telling them he had no such problem,” Fenech Adami said. “I did the right thing.”

Fenech Adami said it was CEO Vincent Magri who took final decisions on recruitment at the waste agency.

Fenech Adami said he could not recall having recommended anybody else other than the two workers he had suggested, although Labour MPs said it was unlikely that he had only suggested two workers in four days of email correspondence. 

Fenech Adami accused Robert Abela of being hypocritical in the way he described the role of parliamentary assistants – of which he was one – as a way of enriching himself when Abela himself receives various consultancies from the Labour government, apart from his retainer at the Planning Authority. “That’s quite rich of you, Hon. Abela…  you’ve become a rich man from all these consultancies,” Fenech Adami said.