Nationalist Party MPs should donate two months’ worth of parliamentary wages to help pay party employees’ salaries, PN MP Jason Azzopardi has suggested.
In a lunchtime tweet posted yesterday, the former minister said that he had “proposed internally that all MPs forego their MP salary for March and April to help the employees at Medialink”.
Dr Azzopardi declined to comment any further when contacted and limited further tweets to Easter greetings. The Times asked PN general secretary Paul Borg Olivier what he made of Dr Azzopardi’s suggestion, but he too was unavailable for comment.
Each member of Malta’s Parliament is paid a €19,000 yearly honoraria, which is then taxed at standard full-time rates. Getting each of the PN’s 30 MPs to heed Dr Azzopardi’s suggestion would moisten the party’s dried-up coffers by €95,000, before tax.
Although the party has not made its accounts public, the amount it owes creditors is substantially greater than that. As recently as four weeks ago, the PN had admitted taking out a €250,000 loan with construction magnate Zaren Vassallo.
The PN is struggling to pay its bills, with party administrators forced to call a staff meeting last week in which employees were told their March wages would only be paid at some point in April.
Dr Borg Olivier had also told The Times last Saturday that Medialink Communications, which runs the party’s print, radio and television platforms, will be restructured.
Around 150 people work for the PN and its affiliated companies, including a number of part-timers who are expected to be the first to feel the restructuring pinch.
Despite the trepidation and uncertainty, one Medialink employee told The Times that they were trying to look at the bright side. “At least this means the party will completely shake itself up, rather than tweaking a thing here and there,” they said.
According to a former Medialink employee, the PN’s financial headaches dated back over a decade. “Some of the problems, such as the impact of 9/11 on [PN travel agency] Euro Tours, weren’t of the party’s own doing. But not enough was done to mitigate them...the writing was on the wall.”