New chairman for PBS

The government yesterday announced the appointment of Andrew Agius Muscat as the new chairman of Public Broadcasting Services, the state-owned broadcasting company. He replaces Michael Mallia who resigned on Wednesday over policy differences with the minister responsible for PBS, Austin Gatt.

A statement by the Department of Information said that Mr Agius Muscat, the general manager of Chef's Choice, a poultry processing factory, had experience as a management consultant with the public sector. Mr Agius Muscat worked as a research analyst with the Management Systems Unit Limited and later spent six years as a consultant in the Management Efficiency Unit in the Office of the Prime Minister.

In 2001 he joined the Techinvest Group where he worked with Business Process Consulting Limited.

Mr Agius Muscat, a business management graduate, is the third PBS chairman to be appointed in less than two years. In January 2003 the government appointed Austin Sammut to the post but he was removed six months later by Dr Gatt after PBS no longer formed part of Education Minister Louis Galea's portfolio. In July 2003 Dr Sammut was replaced by Mr Mallia.

Dr Gatt had spoken to Mr Mallia and asked him to consider his position following a Cabinet meeting on October 11. The minister and the chairman had not been seeing eye to eye on policy for several weeks and, after the matter was discussed at Cabinet, Dr Gatt was given the go ahead to inform Mr Mallia that the government wanted him to resign.

The main issue which led to Mr Mallia's resignation was the fact that some PBS employees who were given golden handshakes to leave the company were then allowed to offer their services to PBS on a freelance basis, which the government opposed.