44 · MONEY
ISSUE 57
OPINION
Manuel is a political blogger who writes for The Sunday Times and manueldelia.com.
GOLDEN BOY Political analyst Emanuel Delia analysis the case of former director of human resources at the financial regulator, George Spiteri. George Spiteri is a lucky guy. He was given €150,000 to retire from his position of HR Manager of the Malta Financial Services Authority which used to include the company registry. The same restructuring that saw him off also gave its old department – the company registry – the status of a separate agency. That new agency recruited George Spiteri as its HR manager. Effectively, therefore, George Spiteri was given in a day what many people earn in 10 years as a bonus for staying in the same job but with far less responsibilities. It’s not a million miles from winning a lottery. But without having to buy a ticket. By trade, George Spiteri is a garden variety senior HR executive. Sure, he has experience, maturity and responsibility. He has many years of service under his belt enforcing public sector rules that can be arcane and esoteric and are often the purview of a limited few. Indeed, HR managers in the public sector are a sort of priesthood. It takes years to learn all the rules and – a bit like the painting of the Golden Gate bridge – when you think you’ve learnt all the rules you need to start catching up with all the changes.
Illustrations by ouch.pics
One reason for that is that although entities within the public sector are in theory autonomous and can take their own decisions, they fall within the system of government which they can’t ignore.
Take an HR manager at the Transport Authority for example. The unions will want to negotiate the best deal for their employees. The HR manager is not paying the employees out of their own pocket so instead of a tough
