No private company has been blacklisted from taking part in public procurement by a Commercial Sanctions Tribunal set up in 2015 to combat precarious employment. The only two cases which have been flagged so far by the Department of Industrial and Employment Relations are still under review.

Details on the operations of this tribunal were given this morning in a presentation held at the Contracts Department in Floriana during which this entity presented its 2016 annual report.

Tribunal chairman Denise Vella noted that the introduction of the possibility of imposing up to a two-year sanction, had already served as a deterrent as very few cases had been referred to them. She noted that once a company would be flagged for adopting abusive employment practices, it would be invited to make submissions before the tribunal, on the grounds of which a ruling would be given. Ms Vella said that since its introduction just two cases had been flagged, both of which were still under review.

From the annual report it transpired that last year a total of 125 appeals were filed, with the average duration of the hearings reduced to 18 days each. No pending appeals were carried forward to this year. The value of the 125 appeals in question was of €109 million, and in 62 per cent of the cases (77) they were rejected.

In comparison, in 2015, 116 appeals had been lodged with the rejection rate being 60 per cent.