Sant accuses government of wrong strategy for the shipyards

Opposition leader Alfred Sant said yesterday that the government was pursuing a wrong strategy on the shipyards and appeared to want to close down the sector.

Speaking in parliament, Dr Sant said Labour's policy was to lead the shipyards to sustainability and to make them the best in the Mediterranean.

The government, however, was showing no such commitment and the fact that it had transferred 900 workers from the dockyard was denying the shipyard useful skills and undermining the shipyards' future and the workers' morale.

Dr Sant was speaking during the debate on the Dockyard and Shipbuilding Yard (Restructuring) Act. The main purpose of the bill is to replace Malta Drydocks and Malta Shipbuilding with Malta Shipyards, which will assume most of the workers, and Industrial Projects and Services Ltd, which will take over the surplus workers and provide them with alternative employment.

Dr Sant said there was no doubt that reform was needed at the shipyards and work practices needed to change, but contrary to what the FOI and the Employers' Association were saying, this was a national asset which needed to be preserved and sustained.

The Labour government had wanted to bring about this reform by dividing the sector into three divisions involved in ship repair, new activities and administrative and technical services. Under that arrangement, all workers would have been retained on the shipyards' books and they would have worked flexibly between the three divisions following agreement with their trade union.

Dr Sant hit out at the way the 900 workers had been transferred from the shipyards, saying there clearly was political discrimination in the selection process. How else could one explain, for example, how dedicated Malta Shipbuilding worker-director Jesmond Tanti had been selected for transfer.

This government, Dr Sant said, had wasted valuable time on the reform of the shipyards. The Labour government had commissioned the Appledore report and reached an agreement with the workers and the management on what needed to be done. But all this effort was ignored by the Nationalist government for three to three and a half years.

The Appledore report, Dr Sant said, had made it clear that workers on new projects and on ship repair had to be part of the same organisation so that they could be utilised as necessary.

The Labour government had also intended to engage the dockyard workers on a process for the redevelopment of Dock No. 1 into a tourist attraction within the Cottonera project. There had been prospects for the building and repair of super yachts, cruise liners, buses and cranes. There had also had plans for the shipyards to expand their activities to building of oil rigs in North African countries. But all these plans had been shelved, showing the government's lack of good will.

Former Economic Services Minister Josef Bonnici had promised a return to financial viability by the shipyards within three years, but, 18 months on, nothing had come out of this statement.

The General Workers' Union, Dr Sant said, had reached the best agreement it could in the circumstances, but the government still needed to account for its actions over the past few years.

Indeed, the government needed to account for the squandering of millions of liri in many sectors, not least the new hospital project, which would cost Lm230 million instead of the originally projected Lm80 million.

Maltese embassies were being opened in all European capitals at a cost which no one knew.

The private-public partnership project for the embellishment of roundabouts was meant to result in savings. Yet taxpayers were spending almost Lm3 million more.

Dr Sant called on the government to publish its plan for reviving the shipyards, including marketing plans and plans for new projects.

Parliamentary Secretary Tony Abela, who spoke first yesterday, praised the government and the GWU for having reached agreement on the reform of the shipyards. The shipyards had already experienced a restructuring process during the past decade or so, but now the government had to take drastic action to make the sector competitive and not dependent on state funds.

In terms of the new reform process, the management had chosen those workers who were most able to contribute to making the shipyards competitive. But this did not mean that the other 900 workers were not up to task. Indeed, these workers were being given the opportunity to work in another company, Industrial Projects and Services Limited. They would also have the option to work in the private sector, retaining current working conditions.

Clearly, therefore, the government, in taking its bold decisions on the shipyards, had safeguarded the workers' interests. The government was also recognising the national importance of the shipyards and was therefore preparing the sector for EU membership.

Nationalist MP Robert Arrigo said that in terms of the reform plan, the government would be assuming dockyard debts equivalent to Lm3,000 per family in Malta.

The government would have looked far better in the eyes of the electorate had such money been distributed to families. In shouldering the shipyards' burdens, the government was showing its commitment to the reform process.

The opposition should support the government in this initiative and give the workers their final chance to restore the shipyards to financial sustainability. The government, after all, was trying to safeguard the workers' jobs against all commercial logic.

The government was now being accused of taking hasty decisions, but the people were fed up of paying for the losses of others.

The government and the opposition should together give a sign that they wanted things to change and progress to be made.

Labour MP Stefan Buontempo said that instead of appreciating the workers' skills and seeking ways to utilise them in the national interest, the government was offering 900 workers early retirement. In this way, it was throwing away the investment made in those people in the past.

It was true that practices at the shipyards had to be changed radically to raise productivity and efficiency but it would be wrong of the government to blame the workers if its reforms failed.

Dr Buontempo said he supported calls for an inquiry into the way the 900 so-called surplus workers were selected. Workers who felt an injustice had been committed in their regard should together write to the EU and they should circulate a petition to the European Parliament.

He warned that if the dockyard reform process as proposed by the government went through, the same course of action would be followed for other government corporations, to the detriment of the workers.

Concluding, Dr Buontempo said the regeneration of the Dock No. 1 area should be part of a holistic plan for Cottonera. He augured that this regeneration would not be delayed and it would be the long-suffering people of Cottonera who would benefit most from it.

Nationalist MP Antoine Mifsud Bonnici said the members of the opposition had the cheek to accuse the government of political discrimination at the shipyards, conveniently forgetting how Nationalist Party supporters at the shipyards were repeatedly discriminated against, and even beaten up, at the shipyards at the time of the Labour government.

The opposition MPs criticised the government for its treatment of the workers, forgetting the threats made by Labour Prime Minister Dom Mintoff in his public meeting on March 15, 1973. That was the time the workers were accused of being thieves.

The Labour Party, Dr Mifsud Bonnici said, should not try to make political mileage of this issue, especially after the reform process had been agreed with the GWU.

The debate continues this morning.