Reference is made to the article entitled ‘Pricey banquet costs Dalli €2,160’ (April 8).

The GRTU feels the article poses an unfair representation of events and casts the social partners and the work being done at the ILO yearly conference in a bad light.

The points presented in the article are correct, however, the title is misleading and very negative. The GRTU does not consider a dinner costing about €80 per participant as a “pricey banquet”. We do not consider this to be on the cheap side, however, considering that the meal was held in Geneva and this was a high-level business dinner, we feel that “pricey” is certainly not an adequate word to describe it.

It should be pointed out that the ILO conference is attended mostly by presidents of social partners’ representatives and these are not employed by the organisations; they work on a voluntary basis.

As far as we can remember and for as long as we have been participating in the ILO conference, this activity, where social partners and the Geneva ambassador are hosted by the minister responsible for social dialogue, has always taken place. These rare occasions are very valued by social partners as a token of appreciation for the work the presidents do and they are valued as being an essential opportunity to build relations in a different setting with the minister responsible for social dialogue.

Social partners are politically independent and, therefore, we like to steer away from political controversy. If the Times of Malta wanted to write about what it deems to have been a “pricey banquet” we would have preferred that this would have been done on its own and not associated with other cases involving separate ministries, when social partners were not involved, that gave rise to controversy.