The prime minister's brief reference to overtime payments to civil servants during the half-day regime that extends from the middle of June to the middle of September received a knee jerk reaction from the Union Haddiema Maghqudin (UHM). Reacting to information published in this newspaper that the summer overtime bill was Lm1.7 million in 2004, and Lm2 million for each of the years 2002 and 2003, the UHM declared the figures to be "completely deceptive".

One reason it gave for this observation was that the overtime bill included 15,000 policemen, soldiers and health workers who did not work on the half-day system. This does not alter the fact that the taxpayer coughed up Lm1.7 million for overtime payments to civil servants during the summer months. No doubt some overtime is necessary. It is as doubtless that much overtime is due to a reluctance bordering on laziness on the part of not a few civil servants to put in an honest day's work.

This is a home truth from home that the UHM had better recognise if it wishes to gain the sympathy of the public. The UHM has a problem here. It is not so much one of perception but of fact. Winter or summer, the lack of productivity that characterises the majority of Malta's civil servants is self-evident.

These people can no longer grouse about their pay, which has risen handsomely under this government. The public did not begrudge those rises but it expected a leap forward in the quality and quantity of the output of its civil servants - not in overtime.

It would be gauche were we to deny that there have been marked improvements in some areas, but in others the administrative machinery continues to be cumbersome and not particularly friendly. The public today expects more because it is paying more for the service. The public includes those who toil in the wealth-creating private sector. Sloth and foot-dragging on the part of civil servants and an inability to take decisions that will ease the frustrations of this sector are too often evident.

In the new era we have entered this is even less acceptable than it used to be. The UHM, which backed Malta's membership in the EU with such vigour, should be as concerned as the rest of us and more that many of its members are failing to make a valid contribution to the EU project. Instead of getting hot under the collar over the business of just how much overtime is paid to half-day workers or full-day workers, the union would be better employed urging its members to carry out a full or (full) half-day's work.

There is nobody on the island who has had dealings with the civil service who is unaware that a not small percentage of the workforce employed with the government is dead weight. One cannot fully lay the blame for this on the government. Ministers are not there to run the civil service. There is the top civil servant and a veritable crowd of highly paid top guys (who also receive performance bonuses even when the performance is not evident down the line) to do that.

Reform must start there. Accountability must start there. Discipline must start there. Example must start there. Demotions must start there. Half days or full days do not matter so much. What does matter is that each half day and each full day is fully and productively worked.