Professional officers in dispute with Enemalta

The Enemalta Professional Officers Union (EPOU) has lodged a dispute with the electricity provider's management and issued a number of directives.

The union said that while it recognised the desperate need for recruitment of professional staff, it objected to new project officers being engaged in grades that were outside the structure of the collective agreement.

Union president Alan Cassar said it had, therefore, directed its 66 members - including engineers, industrial chemists, a media officer and IT specialists - not to attend meetings with the management, not to process files, purchase orders and other documents and not to work on tenders and quotations. "It is painfully obvious that the salaries of professional staff at Enemalta are presently so low that the corporation is failing to attract fresh graduates to fill vacancies.

"In the meantime, engineers with years of experience continue to resign from the corporation, as the management refuses to acknowledge the unique nature of their job providing a 24-hour supply of electricity to power the nation." The union said that although the industrial action at Enemalta was aimed primarily against the management, the public could experience delays in the provision of certain services.

The EPOU warned that it could also direct its members to ignore the newly recruited project officers until their position was regularised.