The Shift’s recent report that the Deputy Prime Minister’s chief canvasser Carmen Ciantar has been allowed to retain her €163,000 salary as head of the Foundation for Medical Services has incensed members of the agency’s senior staff, who are on lower and disproportionate salaries.
Although established industrial relations and human resources practices dictate that salary scales should be proportionate to those of top management, Ciantar’s political appointment and special contract have created a distorted situation at the agency.
According to the FMS’s official remuneration structure, obtained by The Shift through a freedom of information request, the salary of managers immediately under the CEO is €57,000 a year including allowances and a 15% performance bonus.
This means that Carmen Ciantar, who is less qualified than most of her immediate subordinates in management, is being remunerated three times as much.
“While we consider our salary structure as fair, and we are not complaining about the level of our pay, it does not make sense that our CEO is being paid three times what we are making.
“After all, we are always at our desk and dedicate all our energy towards the FMS while she takes care of many other things outside the agency’s remit,” one senior manager remarked to The Shift about Ciantar’s other role as Fearne’s political aide.
The Shift revealed a few weeks ago that despite Prime Minister Robert Abela’s pledge that Ciantar’s extraordinary financial package would be revised when her contract drew to an end, this did not happen after the last general election.
On the contrary, a copy of her new contract signed in May 2022, which was obtained by The Shift through an FOI, shows Ciantar retained the exact same financial package, amounting to more than €13,000 a month, in her new contract, which elapses in 2024.
The Prime Minister has so far refused to declare himself on his deputy prime minister, Health Minister Chris Fearne, having ignored his instructions to downward revise Ciantar’s salary following The Shift’s reports.
Relations between the two, now the government’s top officials, soured after the 2020 Labour leadership contest. Abela was at the time considered the underdog but managed to better Fearne at the Labour ballot box, with the assistance of the outgoing disgraced former prime minister, Joseph Muscat. Ciantar had managed Fearne’s leadership campaign.
It is understood that one option Abela is currently considering is to kick Fearne upstairs by nominating him as Malta’s EU Commissioner in 2024.
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Foundation for Medical Services
What have been her best performance in this position?
Can anybody tell?
Is the Cancer treatment equipment Out of Order , Out of Basic Chemicals Out of operation because there is NOBODY who can operate it, her baggage?
?
Just another one of PL’s blatant obscenities.
It is understood that one option Abela is currently considering is to kick Fearne upstairs by nominating him as Malta?s EU Commissioner in 2024.
replacing a corrupt pm by his consultant – need say more.
Even if she “works” for free, we wouldn’t get our money’s worth.
Everybody is equal, but some are more equal than others.
Make hay whilst the sun shines.
Malta’s new philosophy!!!!
You have to ask, what exactly has she got on him? There’s more to it than meets the eye for sure.
‘Ciantar had managed Fearne’s leadership campaign’
That’s what all the needed ‘qualification’ is about in the PL for ‘some people’.
‘Mrs Muscat was allegedly influencing PL members to vote for Abela’
That’s what probably ‘entitled her’ for having a private car financed by the tax payer, maintenance included.
‘Ms Justyn Caruana has now been given three different govt jobs’
Two scandals, each forcing her to resign from each previous job she had and still failing in all her jobs too, as it appears. Another aspect for ‘qualification’ requirements by the PL.
Curious as it is, in the UK, the present govt is a Tory Party one and they behave nearly exactly like the PL govt in Malta does. There is hardly one in this UK cabinet that even has a clue of what he or she is doing, just like it comes across with the Maltese govt, and it strikes me that the PL has morphed itself into a Malta Tory Party because of the stark similarities between these two differen parties in two different countries.
Hard to tell who is actually left and who is right, but what they have in common is the big money, the greed and the destruction of the country. What the Tories in the UK are doing to the economy and let the people there suffer under their policies, in Malta the PL is doing with the environment and a non-stoppable building craze. It’s all the same, those who benefit from it are always those who count themselves among the rich and are always close to the governing party.
What does she have on Fearne?
Meritocracy at it’s best.