Managers at the maligned government utility bills handling company have received a performance bonus for 2009 but none for this year yet when customer complaints rocketed, prompting the Prime Minister to apologise.
The Finance Ministry yesterday confirmed managers were awarded a performance bonus for the year ending December 2009 related to the implementation of the project to integrate the various business systems when ARMS Ltd was not yet operational to the public.
The ministry would not say how much they were given.
ARMS started issuing water and electricity bills on January 1 this year even though it was set up in 2009 as a joint venture between Water Services Corporation and Enemalta.
“Assessment on the performance of 2010 is made in 2011 and, therefore, no performance bonus has been paid for this year,” a ministry spokesman said when asked whether the company’s managers were paid a performance bonus in a year characterised by numerous customer complaints over the shoddy service by ARMS.
The issue was raised in Parliament by Labour leader Joseph Muscat on Monday in his reaction to the Budget speech. He said managers at ARMS were awarded a performance bonus despite the dismal service the company offered customers.
The ministry spokesman said a performance evaluation template was set up for each individual manager to assess the achievement of milestones and performance related to the implementation of the integrated utilities business systems project for each of their respective areas.
“Each manager was assessed on the basis of this performance template. The performance bonus relates to the progress achieved and performance related till the end of December when ARMS had not yet started public operations. Most of the goals and targets they were assessed on are easily visible and quantifiable,” the spokesman said.
Work and performance carried out in 2009, he added, had nothing to do with the events and performance of 2010 for which management had still to be evaluated.
This year, ARMS came under heavy fire from people who complained of wrongly-issued bills or not issued at all, interminable queues at the Luqa head office, telephone or e-mail queries that went unanswered and threatening legal letters issued by a non-existent legal office.
A chief executive officer for the company was only appointed two weeks ago amid criticism ARMS was headless since the beginning of the year.
After a long summer of discontent, the spokesman said a number of “identifiable measures” were implemented to ease the problems leading the average waiting time to go down to below 30 minutes over the past few days.
He said the company would be able to open its new premises in Blata l-Bajda by the beginning of next year providing a more centralised point of contact for its consumers.