Seven of the eight prison warders who were found absent from work during a ministerial surprise visit have been found guilty, The Sunday Times of Malta is informed.

The officers will now have 10 days to appeal. If they choose not to, they will be disciplined according to set guidelines. The maximum punishment will likely be a warning and a five-day pay cut, especially as this is the first time any of them is being disciplined.

A board set up to discipline prison warders has also recommended more staff be investigated.

The warders, including two senior correctional officers, were absent when they were meant to be on duty during a surprise visit by Home Affairs Minister Manuel Mallia at the Corradino Correctional Facility last April.

The visit led prison director Abraham Zammit to resign and a review of the prisons made a series of recommendations, including that eight officers should face disciplinary proceedings.

A special board established under the terms of the Public Service Commission – the constitutionally appointed body regulating civil servants – presided over the hearings and found seven of them guilty of being absent from work.

The acquitted officer was found to have been acting in accordance with an informal agreement that had been established between the warders in his section and different prison directors over the years through which they could leave early if they worked through their break.

A few of the cases reviewed by the disciplinary board were compounded by these informal agreements, which some of the warders facing the charges took advantage of over time.

In one case, a warder was given special permission by his superiors to visit his elderly mother at St Vincent de Paul residence during working hours but on the day decided “not to go back to work” after having left five hours before the end of his shift.

The board found no evidence of collusion and absolved a senior officer of tampering with the records after it was established she could not have been expected to keep track of all the warders coming and going from her station.

Maximum punishment will likely be a warning and a five-day pay cut

However, the board recommended that staff at the gatehouse – the prison’s entrance – should be investigated.

Moreover, they raised serious concerns about the credibility of one officer who was manning the gatehouse on the day in question and who testified to support the versions of the accused warders during proceedings.

In one particular case, she claimed to have remembered that a colleague of hers had clocked off in the gatehouse punching machine before he left. However, he had done no such thing.

The board concluded in at least two cases, that her testimony “raised serious doubts on her integrity” and the evidence she gave was “not believed to be reliable”.

The disciplinary board acknowledged that since April’s review, measures had been introduced improving the overall checks and balances.

However, it recommended further steps such as disciplinary action against the chief of security and other staff manning the gatehouse for allowing officers to leave without proper authorisation.

It also recommended introducing a biometric punching system. In future, it proposed, the prison director should put in writing any deviations from the standard shifts to ensure accountability and transparency.

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