If the school with the smallest student population has to have three watchmen, as is the case at the San Lawrenz School, how many does the largest ones need to have? But, wait, the school in Gozo also has two janitors and a third has had to be taken on for cleaning work that needs to be done throughout the summer because of refurbishing works.

The mind boggles when considering that the school, which only has 43 students, is housed in the same building as a police station. Is all this for real?

However much a ministry spokesman tried to explain the situation, this will remain one of the finest examples of how lax the government is in recruitment.

Never mind all those people who have been given positions of trust in the ministries and elsewhere – considered in the main as being jobs for party boys – there would seem to be an absolute lack of direction.

San Lawrenz primary is costing the taxpayer €9,000 per student, almost three times the national average. This is far too much, which led the National Audit Office to recommend that it makes financial sense to amalgamate schools with very small student populations.

The office has rightly queried the financial viability of small primary schools. However, it would seem that the government has other ideas.

An extra janitor or watchman here and there may not be considered a big deal in the context of an expanding economy and the rise in the national employment rate but it epitomises the watchman mal-gvern mentality that has plagued every administration since the dawn of self-government way back in 1921.

Many seeking favours in return for the help they gave to a party would consider the post quite adequate payback for their political endeavours. Today, we have an army of customer care people, although watchman remains a sought-after position.

However, the argument assumes greater importance when it is extended further to include the continued employment by the government of more workers (other than watchmen and customer care people) in the public sector.

Claims and counter-claims by the two main political parties about the continued employment of people in the public service and about how much this is costing the taxpayer are made every time the National Statistics Offices comes out with new figures of jobs being generated in the economy.

The government tries to justify the rise by comparing the intake in the time it has been in power with that under the previous administration. For example, in reaction to criticism by the Nationalists over the rising cost of the additional jobs being handed out in the public sector, the Labour Party said the public service wage bill rose by €40 million in the past two years, the equivalent increase registered during the Nationalist administration’s last year.

This kind of reaction will go down well with party supporters but not with those who are tired of political party shenanigans of this nature. If the Nationalist Party did what the Labour Party is claiming it had done in the year before it was elected, then it merited the defeat, though, of course, there were other factors that contributed to the downfall.

But the government is not justified in taking on more workers in the public service than is absolutely necessary. With more government services being provided online, and with the kind of computerised systems in place today, the public service ought to become leaner and far more efficient than it is now.