None so blind

The Nationalist Administration firmly believes that a government's role is that of a regulator and not an operator. In fact, over the last two decades the Nationalist government has successfully privatised Mid-Med Bank, Bank of Valletta, Maltacom, Mediterranean Insurance Brokers, Malta Freeport Terminals, Malta International Airport, Tug Malta and other entities.

Vis-à-vis the Malta Shipyards' saga, the Prime Minister explained in Parliament last July: "Even if the shipyard was making a profit the privatisation process was still the best solution in the national interest... The private sector can be a better employer than the government in the ship and super yacht repairing industry. There is no reason why the government should continue undertaking such a task".

He described three concrete lines of action: subsidising the shipyards hoping that one day the situation would improve; closing the shipyard and allocating the land to commercial use; or initiating the privatisation process. Government sensibly chose the latter option.

The MLP has conveniently kept a rather low profile on the whole affair refraining from offering any serious contribution towards realistic alternatives to privatisation. On June 23, Anġlu Farrugia said in Parliament that the opposition agreed "in principle" with the prospect of privatisation. The day after, on Net TV programme Bil Fatti, Joseph Muscat, unlike the unequivocal pro-divorce stance he took on the same programme, would not commit to the shipyard's privatisation.

Soon after, in Fgura on July 27, he declared that privatisation had to be done seriously and not through speculation. The shipyards occupied some of the country's prime sites and Labour wanted to be sure privatisation would not end up being a real estate exercise. Anyone remember what Alfred Sant had commented regarding Smart City and his creative land speculation theory?

On July 7, on Bondi Plus, Charles Mangion had also cast shadows on the privatisation option, without of course coming up with any sensible alternative. In his July 8 column Leo Brincat avoided entering into the merits or demerits thereof as his piece had "nothing at all to do with the issue as to whether the shipyards should be privatized or not". Previously, on June 24, he had written: "Even if hypothetically all the blame for the yard problem rested on the workers' shoulder, the government was still irresponsible for allowing the time limit agreed with the EU on the restructuring of the yard to almost lapse before starting to revise the situation".

Excuse me, but both the Labour Party and the General Workers' Union were both fully aware that, as January 1, 2009, government subsidies to the Malta Shipyards had to stop. Why didn't they pre-empt the government, switch to pro-active mode and offer realistically effective solutions? Instead, reacting to the government's proposal to privatise, they suggested discussing the setting up of a task force and the long expired 10-year-old 1997 Appeldore Report. What a joke.

The MLP/GWU both know that the restructuring process was not successful in spite of the fact that, during the years, various committees and task forces were set up to try and make the shipyards more efficient. Although in the mid-1980s the workforce amounted to 6,000 by the early 2000s this had dropped to 3,000. Today, standing at some 1,700 workers, the shipyards are still overmanned and this amount needs to be drastically reduced. After all, prospective buyers cannot be expected to act as Big Daddy and take on a burden they can definitely do without.

The MLP and the GWU should face facts. The time has long been up for the Malta Shipyards and December 31 is creeping closer as I write. If the privatisation deal is not clinched by mid-September the Malta Shipyards will simply go bust. Is that what the MLP and the GWU want to risk?

The GWU has accused the government of being arrogant and anti-democratic. So, pray may I ask, what is threatening to take to the streets, to topple the government etc? Words fail me...

It was a breath of fresh air to hear that a mediator stepped in to calm the turbulent waters. In the workers' best interest the government offered to fine-tune the early retirement schemes and if the GWU sincerely has the workers' well-being at heart, it has to shed its political confrontational mantle and go down a notch or two in its super-arrogant and mega-nonsensical expectations.