'Dockyard betrayed for political, commercial reasons'

Labour MP Alfred Sant yesterday accused the government of betraying the dockyard for political and commercial reasons and of selling this national strategic asset at rock-bottom prices.

Dr Sant also divulged that four or five years ago former minister John Dalli had asked him whether the opposition would be against the privatisation of the dockyard. Dr Sant had told him that the opposition was not against as this would benefit the dockyard.

Mr Dalli had then revealed that a large Chinese company based in Singapore, with a global outreach, had shown interest in the enterprise.

The government was now selling the dockyard to a small company which did not have enough experience to manage such a large enterprise.

Dr Sant said that the Manoel Island Yacht Yard was to be transferred to a Maltese consortium without anyone knowing who the persons behind it were. Could this be another Price Club?

Because the dockyard was a national asset, Parliament had to discuss the issue because it was an important shareholder.

As such, Parliament had the right and duty to have detailed and full information on the process. The process would have been disqualified if this had been a private company's shareholders' meeting, and it would have been legally contested because of lack of transparency.

The due diligence report on Palumbo SpA lacked important information regarding the constitution of the company, and did not include a document which claimed that this company was free of any ties with the Mafia. All this, said Dr Sant, showed that the government was discrediting Parliament.

The government had also sold other national assets at cheap prices.

Dr Sant said that there was a strong political element in the government's decision to sell the dockyard at any cost. The political betrayal was still felt today.

He accused government members of making puerile arguments on dockyard workers, calling them the red army, and on the union claiming that it was politicised. He mentioned that nationalist "commandos", in 1982, had spit in front of a former judge who had just been appointed chairman of a national corporation. Other nationalists had pressured the MUT and the bank employees union to protest against the Labour government's 1998 budget.

Another puerile argument brought forward by the government was that the dockyard had lost one billion euros over a 40-year period, when PN governments had lost €2.3 billion in 2008 alone.

Dr Sant said that the 1996-98 Labour government had started to implement the Appledore Report. This had held that less workers had to be used for ship repair and had proposed a corporate structure using the other workers on different jobs under the dockyard's direction. This was part of the re-structuring process. Training for top and middle management personnel had also started.

An agreement had been reached with the union on this process, but it had been ignored when the PN was returned to power.

Four years later, because of the EU membership negotiations, the government had embarked on the restructuring process by reducing the number of workers. No training had been given to top and middle management personnel. The government had intentionally allowed the situation in the dockyard to deteriorate.

The government had agreed with the EU to start the conversion process in the dockyard. There was an agreement to make certain investments which had never materialised. The timeframes for the conversion had been limited and the PL, before the last election, had made it clear that it would amend these timeframes.

Dr Sant said that one of the greatest sins committed by the Nationalist government was that it had not renegotiated the dockyard agreement with the European Commission, whereas the Polish government had managed to get management concessions from the EU regarding its dockyard.

He referred to the Fairmount contracts and said that in the Public Accounts Committee, the Permanent Secretary in the ministry responsible for public entities had declared that he had not monitored the dockyard's privatisation process as it did not form part of his remit. His minister had agreed with him. This, he said, was evidence that the government did not have the national interests at heart.

The PriceWaterhouse Coopers report, although well done, had shortcomings because the auditors had not had access to all information. The contracts favoured the client and had given no protection to the dockyard. How and why could this happen?

Dr Sant revealed that the dockyard was supposed to have requested a report by Engineer Cardona as an insurance engineer. The report had either not been commissioned or no one knew what had happened to it.

Things were not clear about the Fairmount shareholders as owners. Dr Sant said the new shareholders were suing the original ones in the Dutch courts for damages amounting to €46 million because they had discovered that they had been given commissions. At the same time, work on the Fairmount contracts had been undertaken in Malta. The government should have checked this.

Dr Sant said that according to the dockyard's productivity targets set by the PN government in 2001, productivity on the Fairmount vessels had been 10 and five per cent higher than those set for 2008 and 2007 respectively. This showed again that the government had no goodwill to rescue the dockyard.

The lack of transparency in the dockyard issue showed that the government was not managing the economy well. The government had not even given information on the contribution of the gaming sector to the economy, with the excuse that it could not do this because of confidentiality. At the same time, the International Monetary Fund had reported that the output of this sector in Malta was nine per cent of the GDP.