Former Labour councillor gets top job and €60k a year at social care regulator

Former Labour Party councillor and party activist Lisa Cassar Shaw has been given a job as the chief executive officer at the Social Care Standards Authority (SCSA), the government’s regulatory authority for social care, without a call for applications.

Through a political appointment by Minister for the Elderly Jo Etienne Abela, Cassar Shaw, 39, from Sliema, was given the new post with a €60,000 remuneration package including perks and benefits.

According to Cassar Shaw’s contract obtained by The Shift through a Freedom of Information request, in addition to her €41,000 basic salary, Cassar Shaw was also given a raft of benefits, including a €4,000 expense allowance, a €4,658 car allowance and a qualification allowance.

Sources at the SSCA told The Shift that Cassar Shaw is not qualified in the sector as she studied tourism and management.

Some in the SCSA are shocked at the appointment as there are dozens of people more qualified than Cassar Shaw.

“Most of these people share the same political leanings as Cassar Shaw but were still excluded by the minister. It seems they were not fanatical enough,” a senior SCSA official told The Shift.

Cassar Shaw, originally from Fgura, made her debut in politics on the eve of the 2013 elections.

Addressing a Labour Party activity, she said it was former party leader Joseph Muscat who had convinced her to join “the movement” and showered praise on the former leader forced to resign as prime minister in disgrace for “his vision”.

She was elected as a Labour Party local councillor for Sliema in 2013, where she served until the last elections, which she did not contest.

Up until 2015, Cassar Shaw was given another government job as registrar of the Institute of Tourism Studies, at the time in St Julian’s. Her appointment was made by former minister Edward Zammit Lewis, and the registrar was allowed to work from home except for a few hours once a week.

She also served as a director on the board of the Malta Freeport Corporation through another political appointment.

Apart from her new duties as the head of the government’s regulatory authority for social care, Cassar Shaw is also involved in her family business, where she is a director of Tesra Company Ltd with her father Raymond Cassar and husband David Shaw.

Cassar is known as the former co-owner of Carter’s Supermarket, which he owned with Patrick Dalli, the husband of former Labour minister and current European Commissioner Helena Dalli.