The shady side of the White Paper

I refer to the article "The quest for a more accountable civil service" (January 20). Unfortunately, despite the fact that experience has shown time and again that the more personal discretion and power certain managers/heads of department in governmental and parastatal organisations are allowed, the more they abuse of such powers, the government deems it fit to bestow even more power on such management staff.

But, worse than that, we are informed that top management staff who abuse their position will merely lose their top job and, in any case, will still be eligible to apply for a senior post after five years. Now, if I were totally bereft of discretion, I would suggest that this clause is being included to safeguard top ranking officials who are prepared to blindly obey all orders even when such orders smack of irregularities, abuse or pure corruption. By sheer coincidence, five years happens to be, give or take a few exceptions, the normal term of a Maltese legislature. Personally, I believe that in order to reform governmental and parastatal departments more transparency, access to information, personal accountability and written rules are required.

Transparency and access to information are still hard to come by and, as far as certain officials are concerned, personal accountability is a taboo subject. For example, I have personally been requesting to see my personal file for several years and my requests have always been ignored. Certain heads of department even claim it is a public service policy to deny access to one's own personal file!

Now I have never managed to actually see this in print anywhere and would appreciate anyone enlightening me. It is most strange that while legislation has been passed to ensure that one has access to data stored about oneself there are still those who can get away with writing total untruths about a subordinate in a personal file or memo to another manager/director/chairman etc. without the victim even being able to check about such matters, let alone take action to protect one's own interest.

In theory, the law allows an individual to sue anybody else who spreads (by written or spoken means) untruths about one. In practice, this is still not true and certain ruthless heads of department continue to ruin subordinates at will. I could find nothing in the White Paper that will end such abuse as I have described.

Nor have I noted any attempt to safeguard against the practice of certain officials with feudal lord complexes who bully "unavailable" female employees and/or all employees who refuse to take part in shady deals or any kind of malpractice. I believe the government should seriously tackle such matters and the sooner this gets done the better.

In a small private company profit concerns impose a practical limit as to what extent irregularities/harassment/discrimination/irresponsible spending etc. can be ignored without the company owners/shareholders suffering a tangible monetary loss. So while there is some sort of safeguard, even if coincidental, against rampant abuse in real private companies (as opposed to privatised former public entities) the same will never be the case for the civil service and governmental entities since, ultimately, we taxpayers will be forced to fork out all the bills, whether irresponsibly run up or not.

The White Paper also proposes that a public officer may be fired because "he lacks or has lost an essential qualification". What about the cases when an individual's essential, say, health qualification gets lost as a result of the work he/she was ordered to do, as a result of harassment by management staff or as a result of an accident sustained in a vehicle provided by the public service or corporation in question?

What about the instances where an individual lacks a qualification of an academic type simply because the relevant course of study or training was refused to him/her and instead made available only to other employees? What if the victim concerned decides to take legal action against the public service or corporation concerned?

Will the entity in question be seemingly dismantled and set up again under a different name even if with several of the original management staff? Will the ensuing delay in the relevant court case not work against the wronged employee and/or his/her family?