Labour backbencher given new consultancy at Social Justice Ministry

Labour backbencher Katya De Giovanni was put on the government’s payroll as a consultant. She will now earn an additional €10,000 per year on top of two other taxpayer-funded jobs.

Government insiders described the consultancy as “another phantom job,” and a top-up to her already lucrative income.

De Giovanni, an occupational psychologist by profession, was the politically-appointed chief of the Social Care Standards Authority (SCSA). She first entered parliament in 2022 through a casual election.

According to the Government Gazette, she was given her new consultancy job to assist Family Affairs Minister Michael Falzon with undefined “project management” earlier this year. Falzon is the minister who gave De Giovanni her political appointment before she was elected to parliament.

De Giovanni is already juggling two other jobs: one as a senior lecturer at the University of Malta and another as a part-time MP. She also finds time to see private clients, charging them for her services.

According to her 2023 tax return, seen by The Shift, the novice Labour MP declared an income of €92,000 in 2023.

In addition to the €60,000 remuneration she earns as a senior lecturer, she received almost €16,000 as an MP and declared an income of more than €15,000 from her private clients.

The Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) issued a report last September recommending that MPs be precluded from acting as lobbyists, or working in government departments, boards or commissions following an exercise carried out by the Office of the Standards Commission to increase MPs’ transparency and accountability.

The OECD said such practices should be stopped because they threaten the independence of Malta’s legislative arm, which should be kept separate from the executive. Prime Minister Robert Abela has chosen to ignore these recommendations.

De Giovanni hit the headlines as chairperson of the SCSA when she employed her 74-year-old father Anthony as a junior lawyer within the government organisation that she was leading.

A veteran Labour activist and former Fgura Mayor, Anthony De Giovanni beat his much younger rival candidates to the junior legal officer position. He had been kicked out of an Education Ministry consultancy a few months earlier after being caught misusing government IT systems.

Katya De Giovanni initiated legal proceedings against the University of Malta in February for not promoting her to the rank of Associate Professor. The University denied the MPs’ claims of discrimination, insisting it had treated her application on the same basis as that of other academics.