The number of employees in a small department at the Gozo Ministry increased inexplicably in the few months that the Auditor General was conducting a review, a report showed.

Although in March, ministry officials told National Audit Office representatives “there was no staff shortage” in the department’s two sections responsible for road maintenance, a head count four months later found that the personnel had increased by 14, it emerged from the report tabled in Parliament.

This exercise and about 48 promotions within the department during the same period increased costs by about €300,000, or 20 per cent a year.

The staff complement of both the roads section and the construction and maintenance unit was higher, compared to the figures submitted in March 2017, the Audit Office found.

While in March, the two sections had 128 employees, this rose to 142 in July. It also resulted that, during the same period, 48 employees, mostly at low grades, were promoted, receiving higher salaries.

“The department has committed itself to fork out a further €277,813 per annum in salaries through the deployment of additional personnel and, possibly, the materialisation of transfers and promotions in the two sections, even though the roads section and the construction and maintenance unit – as stated by the department’s officials themselves – were already well staffed,” the report noted.

While the department’s officials had described the personnel situation as being too dependent on unskilled employees, even saying that some of them were “untrainable”, the Audit Office said it “can’t understand why the distribution of these complements leaned more towards relatively higher pay grades in July 2017, compared to March 2017”.

“The NAO observes that, while the department’s budget is limited, the department is absorbing significant excess public funds through its roadworks-related human resources element, especially by engaging a surplus of employees and retaining those who are consistently not measuring up to their pay grade,” it said.

The Auditor General pointed out that the department was lacking at all levels of good governance, with roadworks carried out without the drafting  of proper contracts and payments made without any quality control tests.

Important data in the files related to many projects was not found, it said.

Sources said “all imaginable things became possible in Gozo” in the months leading to the election.

Gozo Minister Justyne Caruana, who succeeded Anton Refalo after the June election, has yet to give a breakdown of the number of new employees recruited by the Government in Gozo. In reply to five parliamentary questions on the subject, Dr Caruana only said “the requested information is still being collected”. The first question was tabled in July.

In the last election, the Labour Party wrote history by winning a majority of votes in the Gozo district for the first time since Independence.

ivan.camilleri@timesofmalta.com