Elderly former ministers receiving thousands in annual package as PM’s ‘special envoys’

Aqra dan l-artiklu bil-Malti

Prime Minister Robert Abela is paying tens of thousands of euro yearly to two former Labour ministers, now in their 70s and 80s, to act as his “special envoys”, even though they have no real specific task.

Former Minister Joe Debono Grech, now 85, retired from politics in 2017 after spending 50 years in parliament, is still employed on a full-time basis and receives €40,000 a year through a position of trust contract with the prime minister.

The contract, provided to The Shift following a Freedom of Information request, shows he also received a fully expensed car, driver, and mobile allowance.

Debono Grech also receives an extra honorarium as a member of the board of the state company Gozo Channel.

Louis Grech, aged 76 and until 2017, disgraced former prime minister Joseph Muscat’s deputy, is also a consultant to Robert Abela. He takes home around €60,000 a year through a three-year renewable contract.

Grech has also been named a ‘special envoy’, but unlike his colleague Debono Grech, he is not tied to a fixed 40-hour-a-week job.

Instead, Grech’s contract states that he is to perform duties “as requested by the prime minister on a variety of areas including European Affairs.”

Grech’s political vocation came much later in life than Debono Grech’s.

After spending a lifetime in business and as a top executive of the now-beleaguered Air Malta, he contested the MEP elections in 2004 as soon as Malta joined the EU.

Following Muscat’s firing of his then-deputy leader (now Speaker)  Anglu Farrugia, on the eve of the 2013 elections, Grech was made minister as soon as Labour returned to power in 2013.  He retired in 2017.

Apart from their remuneration from the state due to their special envoy positions, both receive two different pensions.

On top of their regular state pension available to all Maltese citizens, Debono Grech and Grech also receive an extra pension reserved exclusively for former cabinet members.

This second privileged pension is uncapped and pegged to the current salary of a government minister, amounting to some €40,000 a year.

Through their three combined government incomes, the two veteran Labour politicians get close to €100,000 annually.