Alternative employment promised

Malta Enterprise, the Malta Development Corporation, Malta Industrial Parks Ltd and the Minister for Finance and Economic Services have filed a counter protest to one made by 16 MDC employees.

They denied that the employees had been summarily sidelined in the selection of employees for Malta Enterprise or Malta Industrial Parks, insisting that the recruitment process had been conducted professionally without favouritism after it was dscussed with the workers' representatives. In the case of Malta Industrial Parks Ltd there had not even been a selection process since employees were seconded to it.

They said the employees had based their protest on the wrong view that they had a right to retain their former positions, which right did not exist when the company that employed them was dissolved. Indeed, they should recognise that rather than being declared redundant, as happened in the private sector, they had been promised alternative employment.

Indeed, the authorities were currently in the process of finding them such alternative employment.

Dr Andrew Borg Cardona signed the counter protest.