The American University of Malta has rejected a claim for damages by five top academics whose contract was terminated days before the end of their six-month probation period, the Times of Malta has learnt.
Replying to a judicial protest filed by the lecturers, Sadeen Education Investment Ltd, the Jordanian company running the AUM, accused them of “damaging its reputation”.
Dawn Adrian Saliba, Stephen Robert Wassell, Leonid Tevlin, Mark Neal and Marlen Harrison said in their judicial protest the Cospicua-based learning institution was incompetent and of “abusively” ending their contracts by exploiting Malta’s employment laws.
Read: AUM firing staff after failing to attract students
Saying the university administrators had a “deficient business strategy”, the five lecturers argued it was not their fault that the project did not fly because it did not attract enough students to study in Malta. They attributed the prevailing situation to bad decisions and lack of strategy and incompetence.
The law is clear and leaves no room for interpretation
They said the AUM had “failed to invest or did not have the intention to invest in adequate human resources or did not make sufficient funds available to be able to attract and recruit foreign students resulting in the fact that the AUM could not survive with the number of lecturers as well as the number of administrative staff exceeding by far the number of students so recruited before their termination”.
The lecturers, who claimed they had given up to their full-time jobs in other foreign universities to come to Malta on the promise of better salaries and conditions, insisted they ended up jobless without any reason being given.
Deguara Farrugia Advocates, on behalf of the AUM, warned the lecturers to desist from such claims, accusing them of trying to damage the reputation of the institution.
Read: Keep quiet, AUM tells dismissed lecturers
Sticking to the island’s employment laws, the investors said “the law is clear and leaves no room for interpretation”. By law, a company can fire an employee without any reason during the probation period.
They also accused the lecturers of making “poor attempts to put Sadeen in a bad light”.
The AUM project was marred by controversy from day one. After granting the AUM investors prime public land in Marsascala to build a fully-fledged campus, the government had to change its mind following a public outcry. Instead, it gave Sadeen the use of a former British building at Dock 1 area in Cospicua to serve as an initial campus before works can be done on the development of a new building in Marsascala.
Opening the academic year last September, a year behind the original target, the AUM failed to attract any significant number of students. This was followed by the dismissal of almost all the administrative and academic staff.
It is not known whether any students are following courses at the AUM.
ivan.camilleri@timesofmalta.com