Works ministry living up to its name

Resources and Infrastructure Minister Ninu Zammit says the country started saving on the cost of infrastructure projects when the ministry introduced new work practices. He tells Massimo Farrugia how workers in the ministry, once notorious for skiving and low productivity, are now earning their daily wage.

The work done by government employees still, somehow, makes the news. Whenever Resources and Infrastructure Minister Ninu Zammit visits works being carried out on some project or other he always stresses the fact that it was not farmed out to private contractors but was being done "from A to Z" by government workers.

"So what's the big deal? That's how things should be," one would think. Yet the hands-on, tough-looking minister knows that changing ingrained work practices is no mean feat, especially in a country where government workers are the butt of jokes and a synonym for lazy truants. As soon as he took over the ministry in the new legislature he set out to make workers earn their money.

"With over 2,900 workers on a wage bill of Lm17 million or Lm18 million a year, it does not make sense to hire contractors to do your work," he said in an interview.

Before the appointment of Mr Zammit as Minister, the Resources and Infrastructure Ministry used to farm out most of the work through tenders or direct orders, while a good number of its workers regularly gave themselves an early day.

"We introduced a new culture where all workers have to earn their day's pay," Mr Zammit said, explaining how employees had been reorganised into teams and given projects to carry out.

"Besides providing them with the necessary tools and machinery, we started giving them a deadline for the completion of the project. It doesn't matter if the work is done early in the morning, in the afternoon or at night. What interests me is that the work is done on time. If it is ready before the deadline, the workers may take the remaining days off.

"Usually, around half the budget of a project is spent on materials. Once the number of man days required is calculated and we know how many workers are available, we set a deadline."

Mr Zammit said that thanks to the new system, the ministry has in the past two years worked on the Paceville embellishment project, the street paving in Mdina, the storm water project in Marsa and clean-up of innumerable valleys, the revamping of Upper and Lower Barrakka gardens in Valletta and of several promenades, and the restoration of a number of monuments and chapels.

He admitted there had been some initial resistance towards the new practices. But now that the new culture has set in, the system was bearing fruit and workers have started to pride themselves in their work. Giving an example, Mr Zammit said the ministry set up a section responsible for cleaning valleys and watercourses by reallocating 45 employees who used to work as watchmen.

"Why do we need two people guarding the same place? I'm sure they used to get fed up looking at each other all day."

The ministry has also reorganised district workers and, combining different skills, set up teams to work on different projects.

"If you visit Gnien il-Bennejja (Masons' Garden) in Zurrieq, which has just been finished, you will see that the workers did an excellent job," Mr Zammit said. The garden, designed by the minister himself, displays different kinds of stone arches used to build ceilings at a time when concrete had not yet been invented.

But how much money was the government actually saving by using its own workers?

"The Paceville embellishment project, for example, cost around Lm100,000. I think the fee would have gone up to Lm1 million had it been done by a contractor," he said.

Politics is not part of the equation, Mr Zammit said when asked if the ministry found problems dealing with workers who were known to be Labourites.

"There is a lot of cooperation from the majority of workers. We only have worker grades according to skill, and politics does not come into it at all. If you are a mason you work as a mason, and you have to attend the course to be licensed as one."

Mr Zammit's haste and determination to get projects done also has its downside, especially on a few occasions when the ministry started works before receiving the Malta Environment and Planning Authority's go-ahead.

One recent example was when Mepa stopped dredging works in Salini after these had been started without a permit.

"I have no problem waiting for a study to come to an end. However, you can carry out a study in four days or stretch it to six months. I really think that permits need to be issued as soon as possible if we want to get things done in this country.

"In Salini, for example, we were not building skyscrapers. We were simply clearing a watercourse from silt that had been accumulating for the past 40 years. Farmers had even started planting crops on what had been a natural watercourse, so rainwater had nowhere to go. It caused flooding in fields and roads."

Time is money - that's Mr Zammit's bottom line, because if Mepa withholds permission, workers still have to be paid.

"In Mdina, works were halted for eight weeks because workers uncovered archaeological finds while they prepared to lay the paving. It is right to wait when there is good reason to wait. We waited for archaeologists to make their excavations and record the findings before we could continue. In the meantime, residents and commercial outlets were complaining because the paving works were not ready."

Turning to resources, the other aspect of Mr Zammit's portfolio, I asked when the government was going to come up with a policy on renewable energy.

"The Malta Resources Authority is finalising a study on alternative sources of energy, with a special focus on photovoltaics, wind energy and energy from biomass.

"I am all in favour of renewables. However, when considering what options Malta has, we need to look at the local circumstances. With the sound they make and their disco effect, where can 120-metre wind turbines be placed? What problems would arise if wind turbines were placed offshore?

"In the latter case, a huge issue would be the depth of the sea around Malta since it would not be that simple to install a wind turbine in waters deeper than 40 metres. In any case, the project would not be cost-effective. The report, which should be published in the coming months, will give the whole picture of the situation, together with the pros and cons of different scenarios."

It had been reported that the ministry's Oil Exploration Division and Pancontinental Oil and Gas had signed an initial accord to search for oil and gas off Malta.

Covering around 6,000 square miles adjacent to Tunisian and Libyan waters, the area contains two areas that potentially hold about 1.4 billion barrels of oil, according to Pancontinental's website. Did this mean there were concrete possibilities of an oil find?

"We should be careful not to become too enthusiastic. These are only initial seismic surveys which are conducted in other areas around Malta, and which have been conducted before," Mr Zammit said.