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Badly done indeed

 

Shocking that it took the management of a home for orphaned and destitute young women more than 12 months to establish that (alleged) inappropriate disciplinary measures were being administered to the children in their care. And that it took a Cabinet Minister who just got that portfolio back to take the bull by the horns.

That is, of course, if it was proven that the girls were being handcuffed, which is what, I presume, Minister Cristina will be presenting in her appeal to the judgement. But why did this allegation not surface before? Or did it? Was the full report kept under wraps?

It was interesting that she did not mention handcuffs on the Times video interview. But she did in the accompanying report. It seems that this case was badly mismanaged from day one. Sadly ‘déjà vu’ springs to mind. It was reported that the woman in question was engaged in 2009 and asked to leave two years later on direct orders from Dolores Cristina, who had just retaken the Social Policy Ministry.

However, the woman was suspended on full pay for nearly two years, pending the outcome of an inquiry, not sacked outright, according to the Home’s new chairman’s testimony.

According to press reports on Wednesday and Thursday, no details were given at the tribunal by the ministry as to why the experts (who are they) had recommended the post of coordinator be declared redundant. Why redundant?

Badly done indeed. The inquiry was not about the post no longer being necessary, but about the allegation that it was being inappropriately managed.

And was she a coordinator, or did she “Head the residential home” as reported by The Times’Kurt Sansone in his interview with Minister Cristina on Friday. If she did indeed head the home and that post was made redundant, does that mean the home is headless?

Minister Cristina only referred to the woman by name and did not mention the post on camera. It is a rarity for a Minister to be found guilty of unfairly dismissing an employee. The Industrial Tribunal awarded the former policewoman €3,900 compensation and ruled that reinstatement would not be practical. Well, if the post was declared redundant, it means it no longer exists.

According to the minister, following serious allegations by the residents and staff against Mrs Bartolo (described as the home programme co-ordinator at the home in previous reports) she had advised the then chairman Richard Manchè (now deceased) that a board of inquiry was to be set-up to establish whether the allegations were substantiated.

"Mrs Marisa Bartolo's training and extensive experience in the police force have formed her and conditioned her behaviour to date. More than 12 months of direction from the home’s director, role modelling and feedback from the other members of staff have not yielded the desired changes. Her position with the Conservatorio (home) set-up is, therefore, considered untenable", was the excerpt of the boards’ inquiry presented to the tribunal and no details were cited, according to the reports.

No mention of redundancy here, or handcuffs. And, again according to press reports, that was the content of the letter sent to Mrs Bartolo telling her she lost her job.

So who were the experts citing redundancy mentioned at the tribunal? And why did the question of handcuffs not surface at the tribunal? Now if the home director (who I assume is the home head) had given direction and other staff feed back to Mrs Bartolo for more than 12 months and it had not yielded results, why did it have to be the minister to take action? Surely it was up to the management to deal with the problem.

And are the same people who did not deal with the problem until the minister’s intervention still managing the home? I know the Board has a new chairman, but what about the other members? Were they around in the 12 months when Mrs Barolo behaviour was being questioned and no action was taken? Were they appointed for their relevant expertise or Party connections?

If the allegations were substantiated in the inquiry’s report, which is what Minister Cristina said in the interview, why was the report not fully divulged at the Tribunal? The case was instituted against her because she personally got involved in the case soon after her re-appointment as Social Policy Minister.

The published excerpts of the report in the press on Wednesday and Thursday, made no mention of handcuffs and there was no mention of details on what behaviour (implicitly negative) formed and conditioned by her police training and experience affected her post. Nor did it specify what changes were required after direction and feedback given by the home’s director and other members of staff.

Yet, in her Times interview on Friday, the minister said that serious inappropriate behaviour was substantiated in the Board report. “She was violating their (the adolescents in her care) privacy and resorting to restraining measures, including the use of handcuffs, against all the philosophy of the programmes the young women were following,” she said.

The board wrote in its report that the use of handcuffs was “completely inappropriate”, she added. Does it need a board of inquiry to establish that using handcuffs on children is inappropriate? But it looks like those vital details were not presented to the Tribunal, or were they?

In the light of the report and its recommendations, Mrs Cristina said she wrote to the chairman of the Conservatorio Bugeja Home, the late Richard Manché, Ms Bartolo’s direct employer, to terminate her employment.

Now seriously, should not the negative implications of dealing with discipline been noted at the interview stage. I would have thought that that would have been an important question for a former police officer applying for a job dealing with vulnerable young women.

Mrs Bartolo told the tribunal that she had overreached the one-year probation period and was even told by the late Richard Manchè, that she was doing well. The latter of course cannot now be substantiated, unless he did so in writing.

However, her claim that she had been suspended and then dismissed without being given the chance to defend herself over the allegations and that there had been no disciplinary hearing has merit. And was she really not told the specifics on why she had lost her job?

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Local leaders should get used to being lampooned

Oh please, how I wish many of my country folk would grow up and muster a degree of sophistication. I cannot believe the palaver, fuss and non-sequitur comments online following a photomontage of Prime Minister Laurence Gonzi in Gaddafi’s uniform on a Facebook page.

Mind you, it also got wide coverage in The Times online, topping “In Discussion”. Someone recognised what the people want, what they really, really want. I am not repeating myself; I have just lifted the lines from (if I remember correctly) a Spice Girls record.

The much more serious articles about the resignation of Professor Stephen Brincat, the head of Mater Dei Hospital’s oncology department and its aftermath got less than half the number of comments overall. But more on that later; back to satire.

The Nationalist Party used to have the edge on sophistication. I am afraid they have been regressing and have lost it completely with their statement claiming the photomontage was “shameful, personal, rude and vulgar”.

Now, of course it was personal. It was meant to lampoon the Prime Minister. How can you send up the Prime Minister if not personally? It was silly of Rachel Tua, the woman whose page it appeared on, to say, “I don’t see why they should take it so personally.”
Really? Does she believe that depicting someone in a way that derides him is not personal? It was political satire and was not shameful, rude or vulgar is what Ms Tua should have told reporters and she would have been right.

How can a poster of the Prime Minister in a uniform (albeit Gaddafi’s) be shameful, rude or vulgar? Do many of the 322 Times online commentators really believe that Gonzi in a Gaddafi uniform meant he was as awful as Muammar? Are they really so simple minded? It was a send-up, a parody, not to be taken literally.

Politicians and other leaders all over the globe are wide open to that kind of gibe and they accept and ignore it, except in countries run by tyrants. Why the PN thinks its leader should be any different to the rest of the democratic world leaders says a lot about how unworldly it is.

Most of the online comments were by partisans, which is the norm here. They either expressed shock that the Prime Minister could be lampooned (PN), or responded with “What is good for the goose...”(PL). Others claimed that really rude, shameful and vulgar blogs had not been commented on by the PN, getting the response from other commentators that Ms Tua was part of the PL, therefore she should desist from such activity.

Yes, the woman whose Facebook page it appeared on is a Labour councillor who switched political allegiances even though former PN leader Eddie Fenech Adami was her great uncle. She obviously has a political agenda. So what?

The PN is not exactly coy when it comes to ridiculing members of the Opposition. It is all part of the political, puerile fun and games. So what is all this about the PL showing its “true face”? Which is what the PN statement said. Of course this is mud-slinging time as both parties are gearing themselves up for a general election. But as mud-slinging goes, let’s face it; the photomontage in question is hardly heavy handed.

And another thing, besides the politicians and their hangers-on who obviously have a partisan agenda, this national, blinkered view that anyone who dares criticise or disagree must have a political (in the partisan sense) agenda is truly pathetic. Talk about thinking outside the box. We need to take a step back as a nation and start to engage our brains, at least those of us who have one.

Take Stephen Brincat’s resignation, since his sister is married to the Speaker of the House, he would hardly have been keen on upsetting the apple cart. He must have been really pushed to the limit to spill the beans. He said that the government repeatedly ignored his advice on various important issues, making his position untenable.

 “The duties of a clinical chairman of a hospital department are not just to lead the service provision of that department but also to advise the government on matters pertaining to that speciality, cancer in this case... decisions were taken that wasted hundreds of thousands or euro”, he told The Times.

He gave a long detailed list of how the money was wasted. On the move of the oncology department, “Without the slightest bit of planning we were ordered to go to Zammit Clapp. After three years of useless planning we were then told we’d be going to Mater Dei.” Which is where Professor Brincat had agreed they should have gone in the first place. When he was asked whether he thought it was best to move oncology from Boffa to Mater Dei seven years ago, his answer was “a clear, though reluctant one, in favour of Mater Dei to join the other specialities,” he said.

“Apart from the hundreds of thousands of euro wasted, we wasted three precious years during which the life span of our single old linear accelerator (a machine) for treating cancer patients was fast running out.” Eventually, after the machine broke down several times, a new wing was built at Boffa to house a machine that had to eventually be moved to Mater Dei at great expense. “As always, no one is accountable,” he said.

Yet, how many people are worried about this lack of accountability? With all his faults, such a shame about his egocentricity and political naivety, Franco Debono was making waves on the answerability and responsibility of government.

Professor Brincat had warned the Health Department about the danger to the service, “but I was told that the political decision had been taken and that I should therefore shut up”.
Now, that latter statement does reek of a dictatorial style of governance.

Although Prof. Brincat made these sentiments public, many medical professionals are still not prepared to publicly back him on similar allegations despite “the policy to deliberately keep the National Cancer Plan a secret from the professionals that were meant to execute it until the day it was published”, which Professor Brincat disagreed with.

In an interview I had with another medical professional some years ago, this ‘secrecy’ factor, i.e. keeping the professionals in the dark right up to publication date of new plans, did come up. So it is nothing new. That begs the question, what are the professionals scared of? Why are they all keeping mum?


Article published in the Malta Independent on Sunday on 09 September 2012 

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Cancer chief resigns after advice ‘repeatedly ignored’ - timesofmalta.com

Cancer chief resigns after advice ‘repeatedly ignored’ - timesofmalta.com

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Formidable upsetter of many apple carts

Love him or hate him, Dom Mintoff, Il-perit, was the most colourful and powerful politician we in Malta have ever had. The long obits in the upmarket international media are a testimony to that.  Besides, his demise has unleashed an amazing, unprecedented, national, unbridled wave of emotion demonstrating grief from clapping and cheering thousands who gathered in the streets to bid him farewell, but also a number of comments online expressing bitterness and hatred towards him. One of my first memories of the man was when at around 12 years of age I accompanied my dad to visit a family in Zabbar. As now, Dom Mintoff, who was upsetting various apple carts then, was the main topic of conversation and my dad happened to mention that his (Mintoff’s) niece was his secretary. Although a Nationalist, my father, a very gregarious man, did not let partisan politics influence his behaviour. Anyway, as soon as the man of the house realised that my dad was not an ‘enemy’ despite his politics, he led us to his bedroom, reached under the bed and took out a portrait of Dom to show to us. I never quite worked out whether Dom had been hidden under the bed because of our visit, or because he was being labelled a communist. The next thing I remember a few years later was my broadminded parent’s shock at Archbishop Gonzi’s declaration that anyone voting for Labour in the 1962 election would be committing a sin. Mintoff had wanted to curb the influence of the Church in politics and education since day one and relations between him and Archbishop Gonzi got progressively worse throughout his tenure. After living in London for a few years in the late Sixties, one of the first things I noticed on a visit back home in the 1970s was that class distinctions were breaking down. The social changes Mintoff had brought about were tangible. He was a true Labour politician and he improved the lives of the working classes who saw him as their saviour, as opposed to many upper middle class people who hated his guts for upsetting the social order of the time. The eccentric maverick did nothing by halves, and although he did a great deal to better the lot of working class people by improving health provision, education, better work conditions, housing and pensions, he also fomented class hatred in his fiery speeches, which led to violence. As the Telegraph obituary put it he was “The irascible gadfly of Maltese politics. A fiery orator given to exacerbating social divisions at home, when pursuing his political objectives in London he alternated between civilised charm and hysterical abuse.” However, his sometimes temperamental, lengthy negotiations, over Malta being underpaid for its use as a base by the UK and Nato, did pay off. In March 1972, he finally got Malta a good deal. A new seven-year defence agreement got us £14 million a year from Nato, of which £5 million was provided by Britain, with additional money for development and economic projects. He created Air Malta and Sea Malta, which were vital to our economic development. However, whether his action to bring broadcasting under state control was right is debatable. Although it probably was a vehicle for British propaganda at the time, it became and still is, subtle or not, a vehicle of propaganda for whoever is in government. The downside of Mintoff’s premiership was that he was a rabble-rouser and violence increased during the campaigning and after the 1976 general election, when he was reconfirmed to lead the country, the rule of law seemed to break down and human rights were violated. The Nationalist (Opposition) party clubs were wrecked and violence also broke out at Opposition campaign meetings. A year later, again maybe because of Mintoff’s uncompromising style of implementing change, the medical profession went on strike. Then, in 1979, the offices of The Times were burnt and Eddie Fenech Adami’s (then Opposition leader) residence was ransacked, and his wife and family terrorised. However, violence breeds violence and a prominent doctor’s young daughter was blown up by a bomb meant for her father who was not taking part in the then prolonged doctor’s strike. The perpetrators were never found. Mintoff’s premiership ended in 1984, but he stayed on the backbenches, still appearing with his trademark big belt and buckle, causing mayhem to Alfred Sant’s career well over a decade later in 1998 when he voted against his own party and basically lost Labour the election. Later in his dotage, he sometimes put himself in embarrassing situations, not perceived by him. In 2002, I wrote in my then Malta Sunday Times column: “I was embarrassed to see not only an ex-prime minister, but also one who has left an indelible mark on Malta’s history, being reduced to ‘standing up’ to a comedian on national television.  "Despite Dom Mintoff’s non-endearing qualities, he did change the class system on the island and put Malta on the international map. I doubt that Mr Mintoff, a scourge to the Maltese upper classes and Salvatur to the then working classes, takes advice from anyone. Which is a shame, because he would have been well advised to stay away from Xarabank. “He was used in the same context as the bearded lady, or the dancing bear at the fair. That is the kind of show it is.” I did not like seeing him pilloried. Mr Mintoff’s main gist (in the few minutes I watched the programme) was that the then Prime Minister, Dr Fenech Adami, was breaching our Constitution by taking Malta into Europe. He missed the irony that he wanted to integrate Malta with Britain in the Fifties. Despite the people who had and are still trying to undermine the man, his legacy involving a lot of good despite quite a bit of bad cannot be undone. The images of his state funeral, most notably in The Times, (Malta) are proof enough. Article published In the Malta Independent on Sunday on 26 August 2012

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Is insurance as colourful as painting?

Many people regard the insurance business as staid and unexciting, so when I found out that David Curmi, the chief executive officer of MSV Life plc, was also an artist, I was curious to find out whether his paintings, which are abstract and very colourful, were his release from his sober work environment. 

“Despite misconceptions our business is not boring at all, I love it. It is a complex business that is constantly changing. It can be as dynamic and challenging as painting and keeps us on our toes,” he told me.

“My father had recommended I go for the insurance business. I finished school in the late seventies when there were problems at university and my dad suggested I should opt for something fairly new, which insurance was at that time,” he told me. He obviously took to it like a duck to water, since he has not only been in the business for 33 years but is also one of its leading lights.

David grew up in Birkirkara because that was where he went to school. His parents moved there to be near St Aloysius College. “I was lucky in that I never needed transport to get me to school and back.”

The eldest of four boys David has very happy memories of his school days. “We bonded as a group and we still meet up every year,” he says about his classmates. He also still has ties with Birkirkara, in particular the football club, which he says is a great fan of his company. MSV Life sponsors facilities at the club. Besides, the company has also provided a turf football pitch in every village.

I asked David what other community related projects MSV Life is involved in. “One particular long standing programme that MSV is very proud of, for which, incidentally, my predecessors deserve credit not me, is an arrangement with Inspire, formerly the Eden Foundation, whereby we employ over 15 young people who would otherwise have difficulty finding jobs. The posts are quasi full time and there are two facilitators on the premises to help with training and so on,” he told me.

Getting to the nitty-gritty of the business, things have not been easy worldwide. How has the global financial slow down affected your company? I asked him.
“It has certainly left its mark and affected our revenues. Europe and the IMF will put Malta under pressure, uncertainty creates a negative sentiment and our business is very prone to sentiment.

“We are currently experiencing a lower demand for our products. Lower investment returns were and are still affected due to the eurozone problems.
“But things are not as bad as in 2008 and 2011. The life insurance market in Malta, like other international companies, had shrunk in those two years. However, that was only two dips over a span of 16 years. The current eurozone crisis will be resolved. It will be painful, but it will be resolved.”

So what is your current investment strategy? I ask him.
“We are sometimes said to be too conservative, but I am confidant that we are doing it very well. Our guiding principle is never taking unnecessary risks. We will never do anything we don’t fully understand, if we don’t understand it, our clients will not either.
“Our decision process is based on the tennis court analogy. We play centre stage, never on the edge.

“Perhaps one of our most important and fundamental responsibilities is constantly collecting and administering people’s money. We therefore adopt a very prudent and conservative stance in order to preserve the value of capital provided by our shareholders and customers.

“On the local front there are opportunities in retirement planning. Since we are the leading company in that and investment, we are looking forward with a degree of optimism that opportunities will arise in this area.”

So does his optimism extend to his painting too?

“I was 18 when I had my first exhibition, but my career restricted my painting, although I still painted at home whenever I found the time. I was lucky in that the President found out about my painting and offered me to have a recent exhibition at San Anton. That gave my work exposure and was so successful that I am now working on a second exhibition,” he said.

But art is not David’s only passion. He shares his love of music with his wife Mariella; they have just been to Milan for a Bruce Springsteen concert. Their taste in music is eclectic, ranging from rock to folk music from Africa, Asia and South America. He is a great Bob Dylan fan and not only followed his footsteps in New York, but also saw him in concert in Rome, Zurich and Sicily.

“I always have music on when I paint,” he told me.
Eclectic music taste and abstract art seem unlikely bedfellows with insurance management, yet David Curmi seems to have got them to gel for him.

Article published in the Malta Independent on Sunday 19 August 2012

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Is Malta rubbish on waste management or not?

Malta is nearly at the bottom of an EU scoreboard assessing the management of municipal waste, ranking 25th out of 27. Just pipping Bulgaria and Greece to the post, I read in a report from Brussels published in The Times (Malta).

It “has still not implemented a waste prevention programme, it had very high levels of land filling, low recycling levels and was yet to reach targets on biodegradable waste,” according to the EU study.

It failed in 13 of the study’s 18 criteria. It is still land filling 86.3 per cent of its total municipal waste and recycling only seven per cent, we were told. And “although efforts to improve were recognised, particularly compared to the situation before joining the European Union in 2004, it was being slow to meet EU standards”.

“Not so,” came the rebound from Malta's Resources Ministry. “The EU scoreboard which gave Malta low marks on waste management is two years old and does not reflect the current situation. Whereas up to 2010 some 85 per cent of waste was dumped in the landfill and 15 per cent was recycled, at present, some 57 per cent of waste went to landfill and 43 per cent was recycled,” it claimed.

So has Malta been updating its data with the EU? Is the Commission going to base its “roadmaps for the 10 worst-performing member states, including Malta,” on an outdated study?

“We are noticing many improvements in Malta and many projects are currently ongoing in order to dispose of municipal waste better. But despite this progress Malta is still way behind our average standards. Land filling was its biggest waste problem, even though the amount going into landfills was being reduced every year. Disposing of waste in landfills was the worst possible way of dealing with it,” The Times article quoted an EU official saying on Tuesday,

The Ministry had nothing to say about the waste prevention programme in its response. Now the first thing that springs to mind is: how on earth can one “prevent waste”? However, reducing it can certainly be done.

Malta has stopped plastic bags being given out at supermarkets, which has forced me to be creative on how to dispose of my domestic waste. But, since I am not au fait with what exactly waste prevention involves, I visited the EU’s environment page and discovered that it is “A key factor in any waste management strategy” and that it is all about reduction.

Basically, it is about reducing the amount of waste generated at source and reducing the hazardous content of that waste, which automatically simplifies its disposal. That indicated to me that it is the manufacturers of products, which could do something about packaging.

Since many products that we consume come from abroad, it is up to the EU to instigate legislation ensuring manufacturers toe the line all over Europe. That does not, however, absolve our country from ensuring our producers of packaged goods are reducing packaging and that any hazardous content is eliminated.

Yet, it is not only Malta that has made limited progress. “According to the Strategy, although waste prevention has been the paramount objective of both national and EU waste management policies for many years, limited progress has been made in transforming this objective into practical action.

“Neither the Community nor the national targets set in the past have been satisfactorily met. As a result, the Strategy concludes that prevention can only be achieved by influencing practical decisions taken at various stages of the life cycle: how a product is designed, manufactured, made available to the consumer and finally used,” said the EU Environment page on waste.

However, we in Malta can take heart that we shall top the table on waste management in the future. “Its work in the field will take it to the top of the EU league,” the Resources Ministry promised on Wednesday. But is that yet another pre electoral promise?

Article published in The Malta Independent on Sunday on 12 August 2012

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