Enemalta engineers on millennium night

Robert Ghirlando, former chairman of Enemalta (The Sunday Times, December 27), gave an overview of the corporation's efforts to ensure that there would be no power cuts as a consequence of the infamous Y2K bug, at midnight of December 31, 1999.

Prof. Ghirlando laments that while he had spent that night on the corporation premises, as had Enemalta's managers, not so the engineers whose union, he insisted, had made ridiculous demands in order to agree to join them.

Prof. Ghirlando does not do any justice to either the operation engineers on duty on the millennium eve, or to all the other power station shift workers who year after year miss the festive season to provide a service to the nation, while others are enjoying Christmas.

He also did not remember that as August 1999 approached, the corporation's non-shift professionals had asked their union, the EPOU, to inquire if they would be required to be on duty during that 'new millennium' night since, if not, they preferred to spend it celebrating the dawn of the new millennium.

The EPOU made this request to management, but at that time the corporation did not appear to have made any emergency or contingency plans and no reply was forthcoming.

The union thus informed its members of this, and individual members made plans to spend this night with their families.

As the weeks rolled by and the millennium night approached, engineers, individually, began to query the corporation's position and wrote to the chairman, as they could not really believe that Enemalta was not making any contingency plans. The corporation's reply to these engineers was - yes, we are formulating plans, but ask your manager if you would be needed. By then it was September. The union, being proactive once again, put this question in writing, on behalf of its members, to all the corporation's managers.

Apart from a couple of verbal replies confirming that they would not be needed, no manager wrote to say that he required his engineers to be on duty. The union informed the management of this.

At this, the corporation's position suddenly changed to one diametrically opposite and became one of "everyone must keep themselves available".

The situation became even more confusing when the Office of the Prime Minister issued instructions (MPO 157/1999) that no 'special bonus' was to be paid to people working during that night. Thus non-overtime engineers were expected to be on duty without compensation, while those engineers who could claim overtime were expected to cancel their plans to spend the night at work, being only paid overtime at a much lower rate than their current grade. Moreover, engineers who had to be assigned work at distribution centres had to spend the night in a limited space, with no sanitary facilities.

When the OPM later changed its position (circular 46/99), and offered "an extra Lm25 in addition to the normal remuneration", the union agreed with a draft memo, which the chairman was to send to the corporation's engineers, asking them to "volunteer to spend the night" at the corporation. This was on December 28, 1999.

From Prof. Ghirlando's letter to The Sunday Times, it appears that there were no volunteers; however, it is unfair to blame this on the engineers' union, which had made every effort to find an amicable solution although it had long believed that there was no cause for concern as it subsequently turned out.