Drydocks and political

The Malta Independent

Drydocks and politics

Fourteen and a half years and a handful of hundreds of millions of wasted liri later government swears it is getting serious about devising a real solution for Drydocks. This week`s task force report proposes halving the work force, launching of early retirement schemes and other measure to promote voluntary resignations.

At the risk of being unfair in not giving this plan a chance to unfold,` my early warning system indicates` that government is yet again using Drydocks as a political pawn. Government long term benign neglect of the Drydocks problem has created a situation where` a wide cross section of the population have had it up to their ears seeing so many millions being burnt annually in subsidies leading to nowhere.` Strange as it may seem` rather than being condemned for taking so long and wasting so much to address this problem, Government`s` popularity increases whenever it pretends to stand up to the Drydocks Section of the GWU .

So whenever government needs to leverage its popularity it pulls the Drydocks political levers. In pretending it is standing up to cut the waste and cashing on Labour`s understandable` unwillingness to cross swords with the GWU,` the government plays the Drydocks political game with admirable perfection.

The fact that it brought the Drydocks problems again on the fore-front of the agenda is indicative that government needs to leverage its political support in case it decides to go for the option of an election before the financial crisis blows the budget cosmetics apart.

And what more plausible reasons to go for elections than to stimulate industrial unrest at the Drydocks,` hope for some violence for good measure, and turn to the country for a mandate to administer to the shipyards the medicine which the patient` irresponsibly continues to refuse`

Drydocks is a serious problem. I strongly believe that Drydocks has the potential to be commercially viable if well managed. Eternal operational subsidies are no real solution for Drydocks. As a nation we just cannot afford them, certainly not at the level of recent years. Drydocks needs investment, serious training programmes for its workforce and a strong commercial direction leading the Drydocks to maximise its strengths and address its weaknesses. This can only be achieved if accompanied by responsible trade union practices removing resistance to efficiency and helping to control waste.` The ratio of directly productive to unproductive/indirectly unproductive has to be righted` to not more than 4:1.

But on a macro-economic basis the problem of the Drydocks is quite insignificant.` One of the arguments I can never rebut when I argue in favour of serious re-structuring is why so much emphasis is put on Drydocks whilst other sections of the public sector which are equally or even more wasteful are just allowed to get away uncensored and unchallenged.

How can you accept that government is serious in its intentions about Drydocks if it then allows Gozo Channel to continue with wasteful recruitment` when the whole transport sector between the two islands is subsidised annually by over Lm4 million for servicing the interest on the new ferry loans;` and when Gozo Channel returns no profit even though it is using these vessels without incurring any interest or depreciation charges.

How can you accept that the government has good intentions for Drydocks when it allows Freeport to get away with murder and allows Air Malta to be the only airline in the world that has increased its workforce in the last quarter of 2001.` How can you be convinced about government`s good intentions when such re-structuring is normally implemented in the first half of any legislature rather than in the last couple of years.

Solving the Drydocks issue is a priority but can only be done with the necessary fairness to win broad support if it is conducted as an integral part of a much wider re-structuring plan. Failing this,` my bet is that government is just using the Drydocks issue to further its political ends. This could be quite savvy politically but it is far from being the real solution which the country desperately needs.