Busuttil attacks PM over PL workers ‘paid by public funds’
Opposition Leader Simon Busuttil attacked Prime Minister Joseph Muscat for providing Labour Party (PL) employees and ONE journalists with government consultancy posts in order for their wages to be paid by taxpayers’ money rather than by the PL itself.
He used the example of the PL’s executive secretary Lydia Abela, who has been given posts as consultant on ARMS, consultant for the Gozo Ferry and made secretary of the co-operative board, seeing her rake in €67,000 and €17,000 from public funds. He said that the majority of ONE employees are inadvertently being paid by taxpayers’ money after being given various posts on government entities.
His comments came during a political activity in Paola yesterday morning.
Dr Busuttil remarked that this week’s storm stole the Azure Window from Maltese heritage. He quipped that Malta had a separate storm last week, which came about after the Opposition Leader announced that he was asking for the Auditor General to investigate the government contract for the take-over of the former Institute of Tourism Studies site in St George’s Bay with db Group, where Silvio Debono of the Seabank hotel is chairman.
After this announcement, db Group CEO Arthur Gauci requested the Nationalist Party (PN) to return all donations given to the opposition.
Dr Busuttil questioned if he was supposed to condition the decisions taken by the party due to these donations.
The PN has taken umbrage with the €60 million valuation of the former ITS site, which it says db Group won’t have to even pay in full, where the contract stipulates that €5 million would have to be paid up front, and a further €10 million over a number of years. The government has vehemently refuted this claim.
Even so, the PN have asserted, that according to standard valuations the value of the land should have been some €120 million. The site was valued €60 by audit firm Delloitte.
Dr Busuttil stressed that the government has stopped the contract from being discussed in Parliament because Prime Minister Joseph Muscat does not want there to be scrutiny by the MPs.
Turning to the issue of donations, where db Group have asserted that the PN has asked it to pay the wages of PN executive secretary Rosette Thake and CEO Brian St John. The PN has refuted this saying all donations go to the running of the party, whether they pay wages or operations.
He highlighted the people’s shock of hearing that the PN accepts donations coming from prominent businessmen.
“All political parties in Malta live off-of donations. The political system in Malta is one where without donations, you do not have political parties. All parties in Malta constantly ask for donations from everybody. One must remember that when I came back from Europe I inherited a situation where the party was drowning in debt, and workers had not been paid for months. The first thing I did was try to ensure that the workers are getting paid, rather than being focused on opening secret companies in Panama.”
PL reaction
This week Opposition Leader Simon Busuttil and the Nationalist Party drowned in a storm of “falsities” when they were exposed as having asked businesspeople to pay the wages of top PN officials and developed a fake system of invoices.
This was said by the PL in reaction to Dr Busuttil’s address this morning in Paola. The PL added that worse than this, it has now emerged that the PN, who have claimed that the businessman in question, Silvio Debono, is corrupt and uses dirty money, are refusing to return the donations.