The Infrastructure Ministry said this evening that comments by the GWU on Fairmount ship conversion contracts awarded by Malta Shipyards were premature as an inquiry by independent audit firm PriceWaterhouseCoopers was still in hand.

The GWU in a statement earlier said the contracts had cost the Maltese people €80 million. It called on the government to publish the contract conditions and hold an independent inquiry.

The ministry said the GWU knew that the inquiry commissioned by the shipyard board was still in progress, and therefore its statement was baseless. The inquiry would establish the circumstances which led Malta Shipyards to find itself in a disadvantageous contractual and legal position, the ministry said. The projects involved the ships Fjord and Fjell.

The ministry said the GWU was wrong in naming and mentioning one person in connection with this project. Every level of the administration was involved in these projects, including members represented by the GWU, the ministry said. The investigation, therefore, included everyone and not only the person mentioned by the GWU.

In its statement, the GWU said that events had unfolded as it had predicted, but the government had ignored its calls for an inquiry and was acting as if nothing had happened.

The union explained that Malta Shipyards spent some €42 million on machinery and €5 million on material for this contract. Not one cent of these amounts would be recovered. Neither would it recoup the ‘overheads' running into millions of euro.

The GWU asked how the Malta Shipyards marketing manager, Graham Crouser, had been appointed and why he was allowed to leave before his contract expired.

Now that the contract had been executed, the government had no reason to hide the contract conditions, the GWU said.

Should the government refuse to make the contract conditions public, the union said it would have a right to conclude that the conditions were purposely disadvantageous to the shipyard.

It said it was also asking the Leader of the Opposition to raise this issue in Parliament so that an independent inquiry could be launched.

The contract, which was secured in June 2006, was initially hailed by the government as a step forward in making the 'yards viable by 2008.

However, early last year it came under fire from the General Workers' Union, which initially claimed the shipyards stood to lose €40 million from the contract, itself worth about €60 million, and denounced it as a serious case of mismanagement.