‘Public Service Week’ media hype cost taxpayers €300,000

Freedom of Information request by The Shift reveals details the PM refused to disclose to parliament.

 

A week-long media campaign organised in June by public service head Mario Cutajar to launch ‘a new five-year strategy’ cost taxpayers as much as €300,000, a Freedom of Information request by The Shift shows.

The services procured for the campaign were recruited via direct orders and company quotations, instead of through the issue of tenders, as protocol demands. The selected providers were mostly companies known for their service to the Labour Party when organising mass activities.

Prime Minister Robert Abela refused to give details in parliament on how the €300,000 spent by his Principal Permanent Secretary was distributed.

However, the response to a Freedom of Information (FOI) request by The Shift shows that companies belonging to Labour Party loyalists were paid hundreds of thousands of euros to provide services for Cutajar’s week-long campaign.

Pure Concepts, one of the companies on that list, was paid almost €10,000 for ‘design and production of information for the media’. Pure Concepts, which was co-owned up to a few weeks ago by Alan Piscopo and Ismael Borg, is known to have been awarded a raft of direct orders over the past few years.

Piscopo, who has recently transferred his shareholding in Pure Concepts to Borg, is involved in several other companies, including the company accused of mounting scores of illegal billboards for the Labour Party during the electoral campaign.

RVC, the company that coordinates lighting and stage equipment for the Labour party’s mass meetings, was paid €46,000 for ‘technical services’ provided during the public service week. A third company, MAV, was given €34,000 for similar services.

Nexos and Besteam, two other long term suppliers for Labour’s mass events, shared more than €50,000 for “lighting and audio” services, while AF Signs – another of Piscopo’s companies – was paid €23,270 for “the production of backdrops”.

More than €48,000 went to Motion Blur for filming, production and media space buying and €21,000 to the Mediterranean Conference Centre to host activities which mostly could only be attended virtually due to Covid-19 restrictions.

The state broadcaster PBS, which already receives a subsidy of about €6 million a year from public funds, was paid €32,000 for the production of programmes about the event.

The campaign was widely covered in the media, mainly through press releases issued by the OPM, but Mario Cutajar hit the headlines after he said in one of his speeches that he was using a novel LED screen of the type that will be used during the upcoming electoral campaign.

According to Cutajar, this screen, owned and mounted by one of his private services providers, was a sign of the innovation that the public service was making under his leadership.

Civil servants are expected to steer away from politics.

Cutajar, 63, a former deputy secretary general of the GWU and an assistant to Glenn Bedingfield during the latter’s short stint as an MEP, was handpicked by disgraced former Prime Minister Joseph Muscat to become Principle Permanent Secretary on the first day Labour returned to power in 2013.

The first order he gave was to force the resignation of all permanent secretaries – something unheard of in the civil service. Only the Finance Ministry’s Alfred Camilleri and the OPM’s Paul Zahra survived that cull.

Apart from being Malta’s highest-ranking, and highest-paid, public servant, Cutajar was also given a second government appointment as executive director of Heritage Malta, boosting his salary by an additional €20,000 a year.

No other public servant holds a similar position in a separate publicly funded entity.

                           

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12 Comments
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John
John
3 years ago

So we have the MFSA, the FIAU and now OPM using taxpayers’ money to promote themselves. The final result was “grey listing”. What a bunch of amateurs.

Joejoe
Joejoe
3 years ago
Reply to  John

What do you expect from this administration orchestrated by Zozef.

viv
viv
3 years ago

’Mafia Week.’ No wonder they wanted to hide the details.

saviour mamo
saviour mamo
3 years ago

We badly need a revolution in this country to defend our democratic rights.

carlos
carlos
3 years ago
Reply to  saviour mamo

But most are just greedy, corrupt ignorant Or all three, and this will only happen when people start to realise what a mess this corrupt government brought us in and start facing the consequences as some already are.

D. Borg
D. Borg
3 years ago

It would be interesting to compare the invoices issued by these ‘suppliers’, to the Labour Party against those issued to government departments/public entities.
Maybe the Electoral Commissioner might wish to put our mind at rest that taxpayers are not financing the PL’s flashy electoral campaigning by deflating the donations in kind / party bills, only to have public entities (i.e. taxpayers) paying inflated invoices – you know, just to balance the generous suppliers’ books.

carlos
carlos
3 years ago
Reply to  D. Borg

We know that already. We know what corrupt governments do and we know we had one of the most corrupt leaders in Mslta.

Graham Crompton
Graham Crompton
3 years ago

What does this leech Cutijar do for his 20 grand 2nd job? Not a lot I would suggest, as yet again its jobs for the cronies. 300k for a weeks jollies and Abela refuses to tell Parliament what it costs.because it’s all direct orders to his friends.

They must be made accountable for the continual plundering of taxpayers pockets.

Godfrey Leone Ganado
Godfrey Leone Ganado
3 years ago

Politically exposed persons, like Cutajar, should be fodder for FIAU investigations.

carlos
carlos
3 years ago

They,’re using the honest taxpayers’ money to shame the same taxpayers world-wide. ISTHU

JOHN CASSAR
3 years ago

Fejn jaqbillu Mario Cutajar jiftah idejh u jonfoq flus gejjin mit-taxxi tal-poplu bl-addocc. L’Ombudsman ghandu jinvestiga dan l-abbuz mis-Segretarju Principali Permanenti tal-Gvern

JOHN CASSAR
3 years ago

Propaganda Week by Mario brother of Aldo who stands accused of embezzlement whilst working at the Malta Embassy in China

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