Tourism Minister currently staying at Corinthia London with ex Super One reporter Kylie Vella

They are booked into separate rooms, but lest you think that is the story here, it isn’t.

Edward Zammit Lewis is one of three cabinet ministers – the others are Louis Grech and Konrad Mizzi – who has not yet submitted to parliament a full list of his consultants and what they are costing the public coffers. All the other ministers have done so and the results were published in a story in the Times of Malta. The total annual bill for the consultants to those other ministers is, so far, €3.2 million.

One of the reasons the Tourism Minister hasn’t submitted his list of consultants is because he has put ex Super One reporter Kylie Vella on the payroll in his secretariat as a ‘public relations consultant’.

Miss Vella used to work in the infamous newsroom at the Labour Party’s television station until shortly after the party was elected to government. Along with several other Super One staff, she was then shifted from the Labour Party’s payroll to the state payroll, cutting the Labour Party’s wage-bill and transferring it to the state, while concurrently rewarding the Super One reporters – at huge cost to the public – with far larger salaries and much better conditions than they had at the party station.

Kylie Vella was selected by Edward Zammit Lewis as his ministry’s communications coordinator, a post which carries a salary tied to civil service pay grades, but at some point her official designation switched to that of ‘public relations consultant’, which allows the Tourism Minister to choose how much she is paid, and her conditions and allowances, at his own discretion and at a much higher level than that of the relevant civil service pay grade.

Now Miss Vella is currently in London for the World Travel Market, accompanying Zammit Lewis, and has been booked into one of the luxurious rooms at the five-star Corinthia London, all at the expense of the Maltese public. She also flew Club Class with her boss on Air Malta, at a further cost to the public.

When I found out after a tip-off from another guest, I rang her directly at the hotel this morning, to ask her what a Super One reporter knows about (1) public relations and (2) tourism public relations, and how much she is receiving in public funds at her Minister’s discretion, but the call put through to her room went to voice mail. Never mind – as a newly-minted expert in public relations, she will know that her Minister has no choice but to give the public this information (and chance would be a fine thing).