Taxpayers are forking out some €11.5 million annually in additional wages as a result of Enemalta’s restructuring back in 2014, The Sunday Times of Malta is informed.
The restructuring exercise, aimed at putting the State electricity company’s finances back in the black, means that some 454 ‘extra’ employees with the State entity have been put on the public wage bill.
Details on the cost to taxpayers resulting from the restructuring exercise have been kept under wraps since 2014 but have now been included in the latest accounts published by Enemalta plc and Engineering Resources Ltd (ERL) – a new government entity which took over all Enemalta employees.
A spokesman for ERL confirmed that while all the 1,333 former Enemalta employees are on its books, Enemalta and its subsidiaries are currently hiring 879 employees back.
The jobs we were given are below our standards
While the wages related to the 879 employees are being paid by Enemalta as a ‘fee’ to ERL, the wages of the other 454 employees are coming out of government coffers. The accounts of ERL, audited by Nexia BT, show that in 2016 alone, the company received an €11.5 million subvention from the government to cover the salaries of the extra Enemalta employees.
The ERL spokesman said the extra employees were doing “productive” work with various government entities.
However, a senior Enemalta official told this newspaper that most of the extra workers had been deployed with government entities offering little job satisfaction, with “no real productive work for them”.
“Most of the highly skilled workers, including very good technicians, have ended up at the President’s office tending gardens and building rubble walls, doing maintenance works at Mater Dei or in various schools,” he said.
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Former Enemalta employees now seconded to government ministries confirmed to this newspaper that “the jobs we were given are below our standards”. They said their basic salary was the same as what they received at Enemalta, but some complained of losing thousands a year in overtime.
As part of the restructuring plan, negotiated with the Chinese by Minister Konrad Mizzi, the slashing of the wage bill was accompanied by the sale of a third of the State entity to Shanghai Electric.
On their part, the Chinese also bought 90 per cent of Enemalta’s most efficient power plant at the time – the BWSC – with an undertaking to transform the plant to work on natural gas rather than oil.
In return, apart from a third of Enemalta’s profits, the Chinese were guaranteed some €25 million a year in income by selling back to Enemalta all the power generated by the former BWSC plant.
Enemalta’s latest results show that apart from heavy cost cutting measures, the company has managed to use its proceeds from the sale of its shares and property to slash its debts with the banks, thus lowering its financing costs substantially.
The company’s finances were also bolstered by the advantageous price of oil, which was at an all-time low compared to the last decade, and the commissioning of the interconnector, allowing the company to purchase electricity from Sicily at low rates.
The accounts show that under the chairmanship of Fredrick Azzopardi, the cost cutting measures and restructuring of some areas, as well as the greater control exercised over electricity theft, led to a profit of almost €48 million in 2016. Shanghai Electric’s share of the profit amounts to over €15 million.