Lou Bondi is being paid €4,500 a month for his government consultancy job at the festivities foundation. Photo: Darrin Zammit Lupi

Former PBS presenter Lou Bondi is receiving €4,500 a month for his government consultancy job, The Sunday Times of Malta has learnt.

The contract, signed between Mr Bondi and principal permanent secretary Mario Cutajar, engages the former Nationalist Party employee on a 40-hour week basis as strategic communications consultant with the Foundation for National Festivities.

The foundation, created under the auspices of Prime Minister Joseph Muscat, is tasked with organising various national celebrations.

Included in the package is a retainer of €8,240 per annum over and above his salary to cover all his operational expenditure.

The former presenter of discussion programme Bondiplus is thus receiving an annual remuneration of €54,000 and has been engaged on a ‘position of trust’ basis.

The details emerged after this newspaper managed to obtain a copy of the contract after successfully filing a request under the Freedom of Information Act.

The Office of the Prime Minister had refused to give details on Mr Bondi’s engagement.

Although the national celebrations organised by the foundation are expected to be over this year, the government has decided to give Mr Bondi the option to renew his contract when it expires.

He has been prohibited from participating in any tender issued by the foundation he is engaged with

According to the terms of the contract, Mr Bondi has to supervise the creation, organisation, direction and execution of the national celebrations. At the same time, Mr Bondi, who is also a director of TV productions and marketing company Where’s Everybody, has been prohibited from participating in any tender issued by the foundation he is engaged with.

Before the last election, Mr Bondi had been repeatedly accused by the Labour Party of being a key PN strategist and of bias in his television programmes.

Relations had become so bad that former Labour leader Alfred Sant had ordered a formal boycott of Mr Bondi’s programmes.

Though it was lifted after Labour lost the 2008 election, Mr Bondi was constantly accused of bias by Labour and its top officials.

The engagement of Mr Bondi by a Labour government soon after its return to power has ruffled feathers among Labour’s rank and file, forcing the Prime Minister to justify Mr Bondi’s appointment on the party’s radio station.

During the last MEP elections, Dr Muscat cited Mr Bondi’s name as a prime example of Labour’s meritocracy pledge.