The General Workers’ Union has taken the “scandalous” Fairmount contract to the Commission Against Corruption.

“After the government kept opposing an independent public inquiry, despite the opposition’s request at the Public Accounts Committee, the GWU has taken the scandalous Fairmount contract to the Commission Against Corruption,” it said.

The union said it had sent a copy of a report by the audit firm PricewaterhouseCoopers as well as a report prepared by the GWU itself to the Police Commissioner and to the Auditor General.

Moreover, on September 14, the GWU wrote to the commission asking to be able to “present the facts”.

“Now the Commission Against Corruption, the Police Commissioner and the Auditor General have all the facts before them,” the union said.

The union said the reports contained damning statements concerning missing financial files, breaches of the terms of agreement and money spent on bogus training programmes. It said people at Malta Shipyards had been authorised to reduce the estimate by 50 per cent.

The union said it would keep insisting the case be investigated and would keep workers and the public informed about what was happening.

The Fairmount contract, which involved work on two semi-submersible barges, had cost Malta Shipyards more than €36 million and was acknowledged by the government as the main reason for the reversal of the progress the enterprise had been seeing since restructuring took place in 2003.