So another 20 people are going to be added to the state payroll

We have already seen, thanks to stories in the Times of Malta, that the non-civil service members of Manuel Mallia’s private secretariat and those of Godfrey Farrugia – the ones now called ‘positions of trust’ – stayed on the state payroll after their bosses lost their position in the cabinet.

In that situation, they are meant to leave with him. But they didn’t. It follows, therefore, that the members of Michael Falzon’s private secretariat – the Clints, Dinks and Shanes, including the King of Lands and Falzon’s former colleague at the Bank of Valletta, Richard Dimech – will stay on the state payroll too, moved to other positions.

And Deborah Schembri, who is replacing Falzon, will bring in her own 20 trusted cronies, adding them to the public sector payroll.

Michael Falzon’s ‘King of Lands’, Clint Scerri, will stay on the public payroll. His Russian wife, Alina, has been put on the payroll at the Employment & Training Corporation. Clint Scerri is actually one of Education Minister Evarist Bartolo’s creatures – his mother and wife both had jobs found for them within Bartolo’s portfolio.