Taxpayers have sustained 83-year-old former Labour Minister Joe Debono Grech since he left politics in 2017, being paid €40,000 a year for unspecified duties as a ‘Special Delegate of the Prime Minister’ on top of his ministerial pension, according to his contract seen by The Shift.
The role given to Debono Grech is non-existent. The contract, obtained following a Freedom of Information request, shows that while he is employed on a full time basis, he has no office space and no duties at Castille.
The contract was first signed in June 2017 when he was appointed ‘special delegate’ of disgraced former prime minister Joseph Muscat and renewed every 12 months since.
The €40,000 a year he receives for no one knows what tops his ministerial pension of some €32,000 a year. As a former MP and Cabinet member, Debono Grech receives an additional pension on top of the two-thirds national insurance pension.
Robert Abela has renewed Debono Grech’s contract following the last general elections. His €37,590 salary comes with a fully-expensed car and a mobile allowance of €815 a year.
Apart from the generous contract afforded to him by the government, the former Labour minister also sits on the board of directors of state entity Gozo Channel where he also draws another government salary.
In this year’s general elections, the ever-controversial Debono Grech hit the headlines on comments he made during a political rally for former Gozo Minister Clint Camilleri.
In an attempt to justify corruption, he addressed Labour Party supporters saying: “Christ said that there were two thieves. The good one, and the bad one. We’re with the good one,” he said to applause during the political activity on 12 March.
“People say that all (politicians) are corrupt,” Debono Grech added. “And they’re right. But we got nothing out of their (PN) corruption. At least we (PL) gained something out of ours.”
He certainly did.
Prime Minister Robert Abela had condemned Debono Grech’s comments. Yet on the same day he was again sworn in as prime minister, Abela reappointed Debono Grech as his ‘special delegate’.
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Debono Grech effectively defined his employer , Robert Abela , as corrupt. With Robert Abela reconfirming his corruptness by re employing Debono Grech. There go part of the ?10,000 MILLION . The rest are with the rest of the busloads of political appointees doing fuck all. Literally.
Some people want to milk the taxpayers dry.
“Indeed, I say to you, to-day you will be with me in paradise”
The good thief never had it so good in his life-time!!
Tell me this is just not another day in Mafialand
In the final five years of his only taking up seating space in the House, my impression is that the man not only didn’t stand up just once to make a speech, but neither to put a PQ.
Whether it was propaganda couched as a PQ (ask Anthony Agius Decelis what they don’t look but sound like) or an expression of genuine concern in his constituency.
Seems the man had already made up his mind way back in 2017 that that was the last time he was having a shot at the sinecure.
So he jumped up on the gravy train, taking the People for a ride.
Kulhadd kuntent u ferhan, l-aqwa li hemm il-lejber hi, kollox fuq ir-rubini hi, anki jekk toghla l-hajja,hi, ahna kuntenti hi.Viva il-lejber,hi.
You’ve got to have a husky, rough & loud voice, know shit about anything and talk crap, to get such position. Oh, almost forgot, you have to be on the side of corruption and know how to milk cows even after retirement. Mooooooooooooooooooo!
Spot on? just another day in Mafialand while all the puppets appointed by the PM ensure that nothing can change while he remains in charge .
If we can all see it, what will it take to drain the swamp of inequity that Malta has become?
Dan il GOOD THIEF ???? ha ihossa l gholi tal hajja.
Crucifixion – splayed open and gasping for air over hours, days, – is a combination of humiliation and torture, sometimes preceded by flogging. It is certainly not a publicity stunt.
There is still time for redemption, Joe Debono Grech.
Please I need my two-thirds pension to be at least trippled (why do we still call it 2/3 pension? I only get just over 1/10 of my best salary and I receive the max pension). Is there a good thief out there who can help me? I cannot understand why we have two classes of citizens when it comes to pension. Why are MP’s, the President and the Judiciary given higher pensions practically without a ceiling?
Did he not back in 1998 try to physically attack mintoff in parliament because he voted against his own government ?