Tourism Ministry recruiting two people for every worker that leaves

The Shift Team - 04. May. 2023

The Tourism Ministry recruited 40 new employees to replace the 20 who either resigned or retired over the last year, according to figures supplied by Minister Clayton Bartolo.

In answer to a parliamentary question tabled by Opposition MP Mark Anthony Sammut, Bartolo tabled a list of the new employees the ministry had taken on board between March 2022, the month of the last general election, and last January.

Bartolo said that over 10 months, the tourism ministry alone employed 40 new workers at the Institute of Tourism Studies, the Mediterranean Conference Centre – both managed by super CEO Pierre Fenech – the Malta Film Commission, the Malta Tourism Authority and the Foundation for Tourism Zones.

The largest number of new government jobs the ministry created was for the Foundation for Tourism Zones, which is responsible for the maintenance and upkeep of certain touristic areas. The Foundation hired 20 new workers over the time frame while only one had left.

The Foundation was until recently being led by Edward Montebello, a former Labour Party reporter who is now heading the Prime Minister’s communications department.

A National Audit Office report in 2021 found serious corporate governance issues at the Foundation, as well as a total disregard for public procurement rules.

The NAO had criticised the Foundation’s recruitment process, which saw several people being put on its payroll without going through the proper procedures.

Since 2013, the government has increased the number of state employees by more than 10,000 – over and above those who retire or otherwise leave government employment. It is calculated that over 1,000 employees retire from the public sector every year.

At the same time, many of those registering as unemployed have been put on government salaries, and taken off the unemployment register, via the so-called Community Work Scheme – a supposed training initiative managed by the General Workers’ Union on behalf of the JobsPlus agency.

That, too, was taken to task recently by the NAO, which said it “is being rendered as an end in itself rather than a stepping stone towards gainful and sustainable employment”.

The scheme, it said, is tantamount to a “numbers exercise” aimed at keeping unemployment figures low by simply shifting the unemployed onto the scheme.

“Thus, every effort needs to be undertaken to ensure that this Scheme produces the desired outcomes, namely that improvements are made in the applicants’ employability skills, rather than it ending up simply as a numbers exercise whereby persons are just struck off from the unemployment list and shifted on to this Scheme,” the NAO found.

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makjavel

2 years ago

?1000 million debt increase every year , buying votes to keep the pigs bank accounts growing. The Chickens will come home to roost and the Pigs will end up in the Sausage Factory.

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Thomas

2 years ago

Good example for displaying what the work of the ‘Super CEO’ is. Double the numbers of employees for those who left and the other chap building the ‘Palazzo Abela’ in modern style.

I wonder how the work load must have increased to have two new for each who left replaced. Maybe they might soon guard the concrete bunker castles scattered around some places in Malta to keep the curious locals off.

I suppose that this years tourism season in Malta has started already and the usual nuisance the locals have to suffer year after year is for recurring this summer as well. Now with the pandemic gone, ‘happy nights will be here again’. Loud music and screaming along the shores from Sliema up to Paceville till the sun rises. Never mind that the locals living along that area don’t get a nights sleep and have to go to work the next morning. They have to stay up the whole night anyway. They also have to ‘enjoy’ the noise and the waste left on the places and roads along that line whether they like it or not.

But wait a minute, those new employees might see some ‘active service’ in trying to get the worst drunkards among the tourists reigned in. The Police can’t be bothered at all to do that instead.

Maybe they can help out the waiters in serving the customers at night, up to 5am in the morning. I pity the locals already for what is ahead for them, again.

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Joseph Tabone Adami

2 years ago

The local saying that ‘Kieku l-bajda kellha l-widnejn, kienu zgur jerfghuha tnejn” is surely being observed here – as in other spheres of public maintenance.