Sant says Public Administration Bill needs to be recast

Opposition leader Alfred Sant has described the Public Administration Bill as being half-baked and has called on the government to take it back to the drawing board.

Speaking in Parliament, the Labour leader said the Bill failed to meet the demands of public service reform and it would not help develop the public service into an organic, efficient body that promoted talent.

The Bill lacked direction and a new Labour government after the next election would replace it.

Dr Sant said this Bill was being moved at a time when public administration was in a crisis, characterised by inefficiency, lack of accountability and lack of transparency.

Tax revenue was rising fast, yet taxpayers were not getting a better service in return.

There was a very long list of projects which, although promised, had never been carried out. And many other projects had gone over budget and off the calendar.

Among the much talked about projects which had still to be completed were the Ta' Qali Crafts Village, the No. 1 Dock rehabilitation, City Gate and the Old Opera House, the Valletta bus terminus, the White Rocks complex, shelter for Hagar Qim and Mnajdra, a communal centre for Gozo, the removal of St Luke's Hospital chimney, the incinerator at the slaughterhouse, the Connections project in Valletta, the Msida flood relief project, the Vittoriosa waterfront hotel and the Xemxija yacht marina.

Projects that were still half-baked included Chambray, the Cirkewwa quay, the new hospital, the sewage treatment plants, the Mellieha home for the elderly and Dar Malta.

Moreover, Lm191 million had been over-spent on infrastructure projects.

This Bill, Dr Sant said, showed how the government lacked a vision of what the public service was about and had no clue of public service ethos.

The Bill spoke on a committee of permanent secretaries but there was nothing on its relationship with the government and the rest of the public sector. Would this be another screen for the administration?

Dr Sant criticised the clauses of the Bill on the grading of public service employees. Grading should have been addressed according to the circumstances being faced, he said. People with a career in the civil service wanted to see coherence in the way they and their colleagues in agencies and foundations were treated, and one would have expected a central link to be provided.

Furthermore the Bill was unclear about the link between state entities and the government's budgetary projections and operations. Now that the country was to adopt the euro, central budgeting had to reflect itself in the public service structure in an organic way. The government's budget should be one of the anchors around which public service careers were defined and linked.

Another amazing thing, Dr Sant said, was that the Bill was presented as if trade unions did not exist. The Bill should have featured a section on industrial matters.

The way provisions to protect whistleblowers were included was superficial, to say the least, and it appeared that it would only be workers who reported their colleagues who would be protected. Yet whistleblowing was much more than that.

Dr Sant noted that the pubic service was supposed to be politically impartial. This Bill also included the members of ministers' secretariats yet these people, paid for by taxpayers, were political appointees who wrote letters in newspapers as if they were writing for the PN. Dr Sant said he had expected the Bill to speak on the value of public service. But it failed to even differentiate between the public and the private sector.

It included provisions on the code of ethics, but how could this be taken seriously when Parliamentary Secretary Tony Abela used his personal notarial stamp on Castille letterhead paper.

This Bill was utterly confusing and failed to address major issues.

For example, there was nothing about foundations and regulatory authorities which operated alongside the rest of the public sector.

Dr Sant said it was a joke for the government to say that political discrimination did not exist. Political discrimination took place even against Nationalists who were not close to certain ministers. Labour, he said, would end discrimination and people who wanted to work could be sure of a career ahead of them.

That the government was now creating a Merit Commission would not convince anyone, not least because this commission would investigate abuse in the pubic sector after it happened.

The government was speaking of accountability and transparency when several ministers were under a cloud, and the Prime Minister as doing nothing about it. What the people were seeing were more smokescreens. But what they wanted was change, not just a change of ministers, but a change of government and of policies.

This Bill was not good for Malta and should go back to the drawing board, Dr Sant said.

Nationalist MP Michael Asciak said this Bill would place the public service on a modern footing and would clarify the various employee grades in the civil service and in government entities. In the past few years the government introduced quality service charters and e-government. At the same time the size of the civil service over the past 10 years was reduced by eight per cent although some sections had seen justified growth, such as the caring and education sectors.

This bill specified the powers of permanent secretaries and the responsibilities of heads of department. A surplus pool would be created for workers who were excess to their departments and who would be redeployed.

A Merit Commission would regulate the operation of public entities in areas such as recruitment and promotions. Abusive decisions would be annulled.

Reacting to Dr Sant's comments, Dr Asciak said he could remember a civil service in the 1980s which was completely under the thumb of ministers.

One of the major decisions of the PN government was the Interpretation Act which removed the direct influence of ministers on heads of departments and such heads of department had a duty to interpret ministerial directions according to law. When a head of department disagreed with an order by a minister, he could request the order in writing.

Referring to Dr Sant's list of projects, Dr Asciak said he could mention many things which Dr Sant never promised to do but actually did, such as the departure tax, higher petrol, diesel and gas prices, the tax on medicines, on casino winnings, on hunting and trapping and on sewage, the imposition of higher electricity and water rates, higher tariffs on the Gozo Channel ferries, the tax on insurance premia and on credit cards and the way students saw their stipends reduced.

And one could well remember that the only Labour infrastructural project, the Bugibba embellishment cost twice as much as was projected.

Many people, such as Angela Callus, were forced out of the public service for political reasons under Labour.

And while Dr Sant was promising fairness, 250 employees in the Health Department were transferred in just 24 hours under the Labour government.

In just 22 months the Labour government was smeared by corruption and there was neither transparency nor efficiency.

Parliamentary Secretary Carmelo Mifsud Bonnici said efficient public administration guaranteed peace and a good standard of living in the country. With good administration one would have a permanent guarantee of good administration of the law.

This Bill was important in Maltese legislative history because this was the first time that a Maltese imprint was being made on the laws governing the public service since it was created by the British.

Parametres for each and every function were being clearly defined and the new law would also better define bureaucratic order in a simple and direct manner.

The people had the right to expect a modern civil service, agencies and government entities governed by the values laid down in the Bill, which were that public officers will:

• exercise any powers vested in them by law and deliver services to the public, courteously, expeditiously and impartially;

• provide objective and knowlegeable advice on matters within their competence;

• efficiently and effectively implement the policies of the government of the day;

• contribute towards the coordination of government policy in conjuncion with other departments, agencies, government entities and local councils;

• contribute through their own conduct to making their workplace one which recognises talent, develops skills and abilities, rewards performances, avoids discriminatin and offers safety.

The Bill, he said; was removing grey areas giving the country great advantages. It would be a good law, which could be improved but which would surely be beneficial for the people.