Let’s force Arriva out, buy its buses for a song, and get our Chinese friends to operate the service. Oh, and nobody will be made redundant.
Jeremy J Camilleri, GWU section secretary
Jeremy J Camilleri, the GWU section secretary for transport, wrote on timesofmalta’s comments-board that the only promise his union has made in respect of Arriva pulling out of Malta is that no worker will be made redundant.
Exactly how can the General Workers Union make a promise like that? In the Golden Years of Labour, it was possible because because – get this – no employer was allowed to make anyone redundant without the permission of the GWU. And of course, the GWU never granted permission, so nobody was made redundant. Instead, businesses were crippled or went bust paying employees they no longer needed, or just closed down to avoid having to do so.
So now the GWU’s solution to Arriva shutting up shop in Malta and all those Arriva employees suddenly finding themselves out of work is…what, exactly? Forcing Arriva to keep paying their wages even when it is no longer operating in Malta? Impossible.
Perhaps the government’s Plan B for public transport, which we suspect was its Plan A right from the word go, is to force Arriva out, buy their buses for a song – well, they can hardly take them with them – and have our new Chinese friends run the show as a power-station add-on.
26 Comments Comment
Leave a Comment
Nationalisation reminds me of that lurid bastard Dom Mintoff. But Joseph Muscat cannot intervene in that manner so it seems he will use the Chinese formula to sabotage free enterprise.
During a radio interview yesterday, the minister for Transport, Joe Mizzi declared that he will be attending the Malta-Italy conference on oil & gas next week in Rome. However, the conference programme does not list him as a speaker.
Its seems he will just listen to the conference proceedings and keep his mouth shut (no embarrassment for Malta) and of course enjoy a Roman holiday paid by taxpayers.
Finally, Joe Mizzi seems to have realised that he is not fit for the job of minister for oil exploration. As for experts, he doesn’t need them. He knows it all about oil exploration because he spent 2 years on board a drilling ship (doing what?) some 35 years ago – the Stone Age compared to today’s sophisticated science of oil exploration.
Mercifully, he will spare the conference his insane, semi-inarticulate utterings about how he ‘knows where the oil is’ (as if he is even better than Shell, ENI and BP at finding oil) and other ridiculous statements which seem to impress his little village electorate, but no one else.
It is not speech that Joe Mizzi is afraid of. That can be written by someone else. It is the answering to the questions that can come after the speech that makes it difficult for him.
A few weeks (or days) ago I hinted on this possibility. Now, I would say a “probability”
Your reasoning is plausible but what do we make of the previous drivers queuing up to re-form the cooperattiva?
If so, will they reimburse government the substantial sum given to them for their ‘truck/s’ or would this be a way of thanking them for voting Labour into government.
Why do you ask? Armier, hunters, bus drivers, drydocks.
One of the things Labour’s campaign emphasized was minimal capital expenditure over five years. In fact it was barely a year’s equivalent, EU funds awol. Obviously missed by our press.
This government will cost us twice as much as GonziPN. It’s official. And if it can cost twice why not double that?
In other words, recurrent expenditure. He’ll pester his PSE to implement their idiotic ‘work’ subsidy proposal to avoid bailout.
And sell passports.
This person seems to imply that something is in place (the famous Plan B which at first the minister said did not exist and then changed his mind), otherwise how could he promise to safeguard jobs.
Also, is it just the jobs of the drivers that are ‘safe’ or all jobs? Arriva Malta employ about a thousand people and I cannot see them all being absorbed by Plan B. So what will happen to those people?
To me it appears as if the Labour government are trying to use the precarious situation of Arriva to force them out to get one up on the PN and to give whoever else a slice of the cake. If or when Arriva pull the plug (I can’t see how they can stay with the losses they have incurred and with them spending nearly a million a month to cover the withdrawal of bendy buses) what will happen?
I believe Arriva will withdraw the new 12 & 9 metre buses (they have 175 vehicles) to the UK, but leave the bendy buses behind. Ironically, I can then see them being used within Plan B as suddenly they will be deemed safe and, anyway, the minister will decree we need the buses. And because Labour are doing it, it must be right.
Long-term I am not sure if it will be the Chinese (unless they buy out Arriva Malta). Sure the government will issue an Expression of Interest or Tender, but the process will be so prolonged that it will get to the point where it just doesn’t get done. This will allow the favoured people to continue running the bus system on an indefinite basis. All the current advantages of the present system will vanish and it will basically fall back to to what is was before July 2011 because we can’t have progress can we.
Then we will have “but it was much better under Arriva”, “we had air-conditioned buses, etc”. Most probably from the idiots who want the old buses back at present.
One final word – if Arriva are pushed out, then what serious transport company will want to come to Malta only to suffer at the hands of idiots. The consequences for inward investment may be huge. The companies involved in the new power station project may look at all this and start to think is such a long-term investment in Malta worth it after all.
The routes they love to hate had changed the way access around the island was achieved. Basically changed the way we think and consider centre.
One cannot ignore what that implied to the property market, business and office space, commercial centres flourishing outside Valletta and so on.
It was somewhat fun getting to choose which way to enter Valletta from Birkirkara, either Valley Road, Psaila or Hamrun. Access had become possible.
My mother realised she can leave her car, catch a bus and go up all the way from Zurrieq to Mdina via the most scenic of routes. It was about rewiring one’s mentality.
The fact they want to enforce a star configuration, one designed around Valletta alone, simply because they don’t know any better will create a dead end. Trust them to insist on restriction. It’s familiar and unchanging. Makes the perfect alibi for subsistence culture.
What many do not seem to realise is that the transport reform was not merely a matter of contracting a bus company, but for the first time in Maltese history (yes, that’s quite incredible!):
1) training drivers to replace a majority of baboons and introducing an acceptable work ethic
2) designing routes
3) naming bus stops
4) installing GPS technologies
5) introducing modern ticketing purchasing
6) moving from a shabby consortium of drivers-owners-mechanics-cleaners towards a company structure
and so forth….
That Joe Mizzi prat is not fit to be a minister – a typical incompetent li ‘telgha mill-hama tal-partit’. Ousting Arriva out will confirm lack of vision and leadership and, even more so, hint at the party’s ulterior motives.
Eh hija, imma l-Arriva barranin. Il-barrrrani!
Get ready for the return of the notorious bus driver.
They had a cosy meeting down at Transport Malta this week. The idea is to create a ‘cooperative’.
It’s back to public transport being the exclusive territory of its core user. It’s a monopolistic social service, not an engineered solution.
And how dare Austin put up time tables, multiple routes and ticketing option lists at bus stops. So much to read, choose, decide and basically overwork those jelly brains.
I thought there were just four musketeers at most.
Before the election the bus drivers of the old cars were promised that if they vote Labour in eight months they get their buses back on the road.
This is what they have been promised and this what they are going to do, forcing Arriva to leave.
Then other foreign investors will wonder who is next.
Evarist Bartolo once whined that contracts signed by the PN government shouldn’t bind a Labour one, putting ‘lejlet l-elezzjoni’ to justify his words.
He’s particularly spiteful when it comes to Arriva’s contract and Palumbo’s agreement, employees actually protesting outside its gates when L-Orizzont took on the crusade.
He spent five years targetting BWSC, denigrating it’s conversion to gas capability, now the key element in their gas strategy.
His pet hate however, is the MFSA. Imagine.
So that’s why Fenech Group baled out of Arriva.
My husband was passing through Sta. Lucia yesterday afternoon, when he noticed some Chinese workers, wearing boiler suits with Chinese writing on their backs, working in the Chinese garden.
Who are we kidding? China doesn’t give a hoot about our economy and our workers. It will employ its own people; and if our public transport is in its hands, of course there will be redundancies. It flew over its own workers from China to fix a friggin’ garden half way round the globe.
NOW you notice it? That’s been going on for ages, including way back under the Nationalist administration. The Chinese garden was built and then refurbished using Chinese labour.
I don’t mean be even-handed with the two parties, but many of the disgusting policies of Labour have their roots as PN policies.
“Perhaps the government’s Plan B for public transport, which we suspect was its Plan A right from the word go, is to force Arriva out, buy their buses for a song – well, they can hardly take them with them – and have our new Chinese friends run the show as a power-station add-on.”
Co-incidence that the Tumas Group Fenechs:
1/ were partners in Arriva Malta;
2/ are partners in the new power station;
3/ are local agents for China-made King long buses used by Arriva?
But that’s it really, WERE partners in Arriva Malta.
When they pulled out it was taken as a given what the intention was.
Muscat can forget FDI if this goes through.
So it’s going to be Arriva-derci
I wish I’d had the presence of mind before the elections, to start keeping a scrap-book of press reports, heralding all of Labour’s promises and criticisms, followed by the daily reports of their massive screw-ups, U-turns, glaring contradictions and truly corrupt actions.
This is what the Chinese are famous for:
http://www.nytimes.com/newsgraphics/2013/10/27/south-china-sea/?smid=fb-nytimes&WT.z_sma=MG_AGO_20131025
Typical Labour. Anything done by the PN, however good, is bad. Anything done by Labour, however bad, is good. So Independence, achieved by the PN, was bad. Republic Day, created by the PL, was good. Arriva, brought by the PN to bring public transport to the 21st century, must be bad, so the old, decrepit, filthy, polluting buses with their loutish drivers must be good. Unfortunately, this is the sad, spiteful, Mintoffian doctrine to which the large mass of Labour supporters subscribe.
First Arriva , next Liquigas and then Palumbo.
Exactly.
Lots of grubby hands to lay on that superyacht thingy they got going. Watch Dock 1 and Marsa Shipbuilding as well.
What everyone seems to miss is Evarist being minister in charge of ‘work’, a convinced Marxist who doesn’t give me the impression he’s exactly enamoured of entrepreneurship.
And if ST’s sending the usual pre-budget message, they’ll say no problem in parliament.
Signed agreements count for zilch with these individuals. Which is why ST’s nervous about Scicluna’s talk of surprises and indirect taxation and worse, the reluctance to issue details to which commitment would be a given.
Where does anyone stand with this administration? Fact is FDI figures are the real scandal, they haven’t dipped, they’re literally missing.
Lawrence Gonzi did what he had to do, remove two of the worst burdens, Malta drydocks and the old buses. He was on his way to transform Enemalta. Trust Labour to bring it all back.
Meantime unemployment’s up by 11%, and no one gives a damn. Except the PN, which is negative.