The government has issued calls to engage people in low-skilled jobs, which had been frozen for many years as a measure to reduce the swelling civil service.
The Ministry of Transport and Infrastructure published calls to employ plasterers, painters, mechanics, carpenters and joiners.
The salaries in the lower grades of the public service range from €14,000 to €16,000 a year and the eligibility criteria are quite flexible. Applicants are not expected to have a good knowledge of the English language, for example.
Senior public officials told this newspaper such types of government vacancies had been frozen for many years. “The advertised jobs are usually no longer done by government employees. Refurbishment of buildings and woodwork jobs are nowadays outsourced, so it’s usually much cheaper for the government,” a senior public officer noted.
“The government’s plans to recruit such trades sends the civil service back about 20 years and comes as a surprise,” another civil servant said.
The government’s plans to recruit such trades sends the civil service back about 20 years
The calls, close to the end of the legislature, are raising suspicions in certain quarters of being no more than a pre-electoral move to try to “please those who are still asking ministers for a government job”.
“Before every election, pressure on politicians for government jobs increases and this has always been the case. However, this temptation has been resisted for quite some time now. We hope past lessons were learnt,” a senior officer said.
Questions to the Ministry for Transport and Infrastructure about the need for such vacancies and how many employees in every category was the government planning to recruit remained unanswered at the time of writing.
While the number of employees on the government’s payroll had been declining until 2013, with fewer being recruited compared to the number of retiring civil servants, the trend was reversed during this legislature, a government employee said.
Since Labour came to power, those working in the public service increased by 3,000 until September 2016 (latest available statistics), with the public sector reaching 44,409 employees. It is calculated that more than 1,000 civil servants retire every year.
The seven per cent increase in the public sector happened while the economy was generating many job opportunities in the private sector, industrial relations observers noted.
The Sunday Times of Malta has reported there were indications the government will be giving in to electoral pressure and the Minister Within the Office of the Prime Minister, Konrad Mizzi, reportedly gave the green light to recruiting about 150 fitters to join the Water Services Corporation.
Asked to justify the 15 per cent increase in the WSC workforce, Dr Mizzi did not reply. However, in a statement last week, his ministry said the people being employed by the WSC were replacing others who had retired along the years. It said the employment of such people would be cost neutral by 2018.
The Sunday Times of Malta reported that the overwhelming majority of the new fitters lived in the fourth electoral district, which is contested by the minister involved in the Panama Papers scandal.
Last year, about 700 long-term unemployed were put on the public payroll through a new scheme managed by the General Workers’ Union on behalf of the government.
Although these workers were given jobs with the local councils and the Education Department, they are considered by the statistics office as private sector employees because they have been placed on the books of a GWU foundation, deemed to be a private entity.
Through the scheme, the government pays €900 a month for each employee, with the GWU obliged to pay them the minimum wage and pocketing the rest.
ivan.camilleri@timesofmalta.com