Dozen Employed At Gozo’s Historical Windmill With Public Funds Are Regular No Shows
A folk group in Gozo, Tal-Fuklar, has engaged 12 or 13 employees after it was given €230,424 by the Ministry of Gozo to open a historical windmill to the public for a year, but many don’t even turn up, a Lovin Malta investigation has uncovered.
Upon visiting the site, only one attendant or usher was found at the Tat-Tmien Kantunieri Windmill in Xewkija.
In parliament, Gozo Minister Clint Camilleri said that the contract with Tal-Fuklar was for “the management of historical sites in Gozo that fall under the responsibility of the Gozo Ministry.” But Tal-Fuklar president Michael Refalo let out when contacted on the phone that Tal-Fuklar only run that one historical site, the windmill.
Asked about the 12 or 13 site guides or attendants that have been employed and where they have been posted or assigned, Refalo did not deny the engagements. He said that the question has to be put to the spokesperson of the Ministry for Gozo.
On pointing out that Tal-Fuklar, an NGO, had directly engaged the employees and not the Ministry for Gozo, he said: “They told me to tell you to call the communications officer of the Ministry for Gozo.”
He also claimed that the spokesperson of the Ministry had informed him that questions had already been answered via email.
Asked who was the Gozo Ministry spokesperson whom Lovin Malta was supposed to contact – whether it was Leanne Bajada – he said: “I think there is more than one, that’s the problem.”
Prior to contacting Refalo on the phone, questions were emailed to Refalo, and separately to Gozo Ministry spokesperson Leanne Bajada and Minister Clint Camilleri. All these emails remained unanswered.
Before opening it to the public, Tat-Tmien Kantunieri Windmill – Gozo’s oldest windmill built in 1710 – was directly restored by the Ministry for Gozo.
The restoration was funded by EU funds under the European Regional Development Funds programme at a cost of €500,000. It was opened on 21st January 2021 in a grand media event hosted by Gozo Minister Clint Camilleri and Parliamentary Secretary for EU Funds Stefan Zrinzo Azzopardi.
The contract signed with Tal-Fuklar at around the same time that the windmill was opened to the public was not put to tender. It was given to Tal-Fuklar under the so-called ‘negotiated procedure’. Tal-Fuklar then engaged the 12 or 13 employees after it signed the contract according to sources.
All of this is a departure from previous practice. In the past, a long-established NGO dedicated solely to historical heritage, Wirt Ghawdex, used to get custodianship of sites, restore them itself by seeking funds from varied sponsors, mostly government funds, and then open the sites by using its volunteers and raising money through donations.
In the case of the windmill, the Gozo Ministry bypassed Wirt Ghawdex and negotiated directly with Tal-Fuklar. Questions sent to Gozo Minister Clint Camilleri and his spokesperson on why Wirt Ghawdex was excluded from negotiations were not answered.
Tat-Tmien Kantunieri Windmill is relatively small and bare, with its only exhibits being two monitors with loop documentaries, one about the history of windmills in Malta and the other about the restoration of the windmill itself. It is open to the public between 8.30am and 9pm – no other historic site in the Maltese Islands is open in the evening, all others close at around 5pm.
One of those other sites is Ta Kola Windmill, the prime windmill attraction in the islands that has a permanent exhibition and – in contrast to Tal-Fuklar’s 12 or 13 site guides (as already pointed out, only one employee was present when Lovin Malta visited) – only has a full complement of a couple of site attendants. Ta Kola is managed by Heritage Malta, the national historical heritage agency.
Tal-Fuklar describes itself as a “folk group” with its main aim being to enhance “awareness” of traditional Maltese culture with special focus on traditional crafts, customs, and singing. A look at its Facebook page shows that its main activities have been as a folk band – there is no mention of the windmill in Xewkija on its Facebook page.
This is the first time it has been entrusted – via direct order – with managing a historic site. Its president, Michael Refalo, did not reply to questions on why the folk band decided to start managing a historic site and whether it is suitably knowledgeable for the task.
Neither did he answer questions on whether he is one of the 12 or 13 employees engaged by Tal-Fuklar after being granted the €230,484 by the Gozo Ministry, or why there is a donation box at the windmill in the name of Tal-Fuklar given that the government is paying the folk group to open the windmill.
The revelations on the contract with Tal-Fuklar comes amid chatter in Gozo from various sources, including sources within the Labour Party, of hundreds of people having been employed with private companies that are in turn contracted to give a service to the State or Ministry of Gozo.
These include a few hundred engaged via the Community Work Scheme, a scheme originally designed as a bridge to get the long-term unemployed into productive private-sector work that has morphed into a route into government employment. The scheme is run by a foundation in which the General Workers Union is the largest shareholder.
Investigations into the deployments of the community workers show that around one in four are assigned to the Ministry for Gozo, with most of those, in turn, being assigned to the department responsible for cleaning and upkeep of public areas. These include beach cleaners, whose numbers have increased substantially in the past two years.
Investigations show that these beach cleaners typically spend around an hour every morning on the job, and some of them then go on to do a second job – with the private sector – afterwards. A report by the National Audit Office found out that these workers cost taxpayers around €15,000 annually in fees to the GWU-run foundation that engages them.
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