At least six of the 10 members sitting on Gozo Channel’s new board of directors are Labour Party activists.
Appointed by Gozo Minister Justyne Caruana, the board is again chaired by Joe Cordina, Labour’s major in Xagħra and a candidate in the last general election.
Sitting with him are two former Labour MPs, a Labour local councillor, a member of the party’s executive committee and a Labour electoral candidate.
According to a notice in the Malta Government Gazette, Josianne Cutajar, a legal officer at the Office of the Prime Minister and a Labour local councillor in Nadur, is deputy chairwoman.
The Labour activists on the board are George Camilleri, who contested the last general election on a Labour ticket and got 94 votes, Monica Farrugia, a government official at Identity Malta and a member of Labour’s national executive, and former MPs Lino Debono and Joe Debono Grech.
The company secretary is Lisa Brooke, who manages the Gozitan branch of the Office of the President of Malta and is a Labour local councillor in Għarb. Elvia George, Charles Muscat, Anthony Vella and Monica Borg are the other Gozo Channel board members.
Sources close to Gozo Channel noted that although its board of directors had always included people close to the party in power, the one appointed by Dr Caruana was “by far the heaviest loaded” in favour of the governing party.
“It is now almost expected that the Gozo Minister would nominate one or two party people on the Gozo Channel board. But having six out of 10 and the company secretary doesn’t reflect well on the minister’s sense of balance,” a senior company official told this newspaper.
In the weeks before the last election, Gozo Channel offered a number of jobs to Gozitan workers.
Companies offering services to Gozo Channel, including mooring men, bar attendants, cleaning and security, hired dozens of Gozitans on fixed-term contracts just days before the general election.
For the first time since Malta’s Independence, the Gozo district was won by the Labour Party in June's general election.