Freeloading off public money (1)
Take your children to and from school in your own car or have your wife do it in hers. Failing that, take advantage of Edward Scicluna’s government subsidy for parents who use school transport. Your government car and driver are not a government subsidy for your household school runs and your family errands.
Stefan Buontempo’s government driver collects his boss’s children from home every day in his government car with official GM21 plates and takes them to school at Chiswick House in Kappara and St Martin’s College in Swatar.
Buontempo is usually in the car too but sometimes the driver does the drop-off alone.
Then in the afternoon the state-funded driver returns in GM21 to collect the children and take them home. Buontempo is usually in the car, but sometimes the driver is alone.
And on rare occasions, the state-funded driver in GM21 drives Mrs Buontempo to the school gates (in her track suit).
18 Comments Comment
Leave a Comment
Hekk sewwa?
Franco Debono’s birds (the actual feathered ones) are up in arms.
They demand to be taken for a daily ride by his state-funded driver in his state-provided car. That is why Debono sold his soul to Taghna Lkoll. Everyone’s fringe benefits should be equal.
Isn’t that what their propaganda video says?
In that case, he should employ a hunter with a gun licence as his driver. So his bird would be as safe as Manuel’s children with a gun-toting Billy the Kid.
Somewhere around 2006 or thereabouts, then Armed Forces Commander, Brigadier Carmel Vassallo, was invited to a Christmas party on a Sunday morning at a private residence. He was invited there with Mrs Vassallo, and the invitation would have been sent to him as “AFM Commander” at AFM HQ, no doubt at all.
I then walked out with him at the end as we were talking about something or other and expected to see his chauffeur and car waiting. He walked up to a very ordinary looking white car (old but well kept), said his goodbyes and drove off with his wife.
When I asked him if his AFM driver and car were only for office hours, or for use at any time, he replied that the driver and car were for use any time that he was on official business, but having drinks on a Sunday afternoon at a private party wasn’t exactly “Army business” and it would be a waste of Army time and funds if someone sat outside in the car for four hours on a Sunday afternoon and that it should never be done.
That – and many other such things – is the mark of a real gentleman. Brigadier Vassallo was (and still is) a true and upstanding gentleman.
While the rest of the population has to pay dearly for school transport.
I can confirm that this has been going on from day one when he became a parliamentary secretary.
The prime minister’s wife has a full-time driver who takes the twins to San Anton School and picks them up every day. He also chauffeurs her around all day in a black MPV with tinted windows.
… and her husband gets paid for the official use of the family car.
The measure of a man is what he does with power – Plato
The poor get poorer while these bastards freeload off the state.
Not justifying this, but I used to see Tonio Fenech’s official car dropping off his children replete in their football strip.
[Daphne – Well, apparently you are seeking to justify this because you have failed to notice that Tonio Fenech is no longer a cabinet minister and doesn’t have access to a state-paid chauffeur and car.]
Both are/were wrong
Well he was a cabinet (finance) minister back then when his children were being dropped off by his state-paid driver as it happened right in front of me right outside of his private address which is around the corner from me
My point was it happened then and it happens now whereas it shouldn’t be happening at all. The vehicles are there for official use and not freeloading by any of them.
In a track suit. Wow. Xi klassi.
Gary, exactly one of the reasons the PN got such a drubbing at the elections was Tonio Fenech’s antics.
Agreed.
Unfortunately no lesson has been learnt and his general arrogant attitude hasn’t changed.
I must report that, as when you brought this subject up a year or so ago, Stefan Buontempo was conspicuous by his usually rather voluminous absence outside the St. Martin’s school gates today.
It will probably be another few days before he makes an appearance there, like last time around, when his wife did the “job” in a car not bearing the usual GM21 plates.
Roderick Galdes’s wife and children are chaffeured to and from work and school in his GM car.