‘Toxic culture of clientelism at MCAST’

Malta’s College of Arts, Sciences and Technology was found to have tolerated “an endemic and toxic practice of recommendations” for favoured teaching candidates, according to a ministerial inquiry concluded in 2018 and never published.

The inquiry was kick-started on the back of allegations by a scorned employee, human resources head Josephine Abdilla, who is still being paid a salary while on special leave from MCAST three years on. Her allegations of corruption were disproven by the inquiry.

In the process however, the inquiry suggested that the college’s former president of its board of governors, Silvio De Bono, had shown an overweening interest in the college’s running.

The was because witnesses had confirmed with the inquiry what it called “an odious practice of clientelism and recommendations”, claiming De Bono had passed on names of candidates to be “taken care of”.

De Bono appears to have been petitioned by Castille, who would request that certain applicants be given a job. De Bono said he would always see that should such candidates satisfy the required criteria first and foremost, before they be allowed to progress in the selection process.

De Bono admitted that this political pressure to select ‘recommended’ candidates happened all the time. But he denied giving anyone unfair advantage or that unmeritorious candidates were allowed to progress in a job interview.

Despite being a non-executive chair of the board, De Bono – politically-appointed to the role in 2013 and again in 2017 – was seen to take an active interest in the college’s running. But his hands-on approach allowed Josephine Abdilla to curry excessive familiarity with De Bono, instead of allowing the school principal to act as the college’s CEO.

De Bono was also the head of his own privately-owned educational centre, IDEA, which was offering graduate and post-graduate programmes that placed him in a conflict of interest by occupying the highest role in a public institution while running his own private college.

Despite this conflict, De Bono was re-appointed to his post for another three years in 2017.

De Bono was alleged to have recommended prospective candidates for a teaching job. He himself admitted to the inquiry board of having taken an active interest in prospective applicants for a teaching job, saying he would pass on his recommendation to Abdilla so that should the applicants fare well in their interviews “then they should be considered.”

But he denied recommending preferred candidates for a job.

The “over-enthusiastic” De Bono was also said to have had a direct link with Josephine Abdilla, who later would accuse him of pocketing a ‘commission’ from newly-recruited teachers’ salaries. The allegation was never proven in the inquiry, after Abdilla failed to provide any evidence of her allegations when repeatedly asked.

De Bono’s “hands on” interest in the college’s running allowed him to take priority over the school principal himself. In turn, his excessive familiarity with Josephine Abdilla, who ran the HR department, allowed her to wield this influence with her own subordinates, giving the impression that her demands carried the stamp of approval from De Bono himself.

When Abdilla, faced with complaints from her subordinates, was placed on special leave, she hit back by alleging that De Bono was recommending which teaching candidates should be employed at MCAST – even in the eventual choice of Stephen Cachia’s replacement as school principal, Dr James Calleja.

Abdilla claimed with the inquiry that such recommendations would come from Labour MPs such as Silvio Parnis, or the wife of former Gozo minister Anton Refalo.

Cachia did corroborate these complaints from Abdilla: namely recommendations communicated to her from ministerial ‘customer care’ offices, and that even De Bono himself would pronounce himself in favour of a potential teaching candidate. But he said it never resulted to him that De Bono gave any explicit instruction on such decisions.

Abdilla sues MaltaToday

Abdilla has been paid her salary for three years since being put on special leave from MCAST, after colleagues filed several complaints against her, accusing her later in the ministerial inquiry of attempting to influence members of a selection panel grading teaching recruits.

Although having never seen the inquiry report, Abdilla has sued MaltaToday for defamation for reporting conclusions from the inquiry. Her lawyers are Andrew Borg Cardona and Matthew Cutajar.

The education ministry remains unwilling to comment on why Abdilla is still being paid a full salary despite being out on special leave and an internal inquiry having disproved her allegations, and even suggested criminal action to be taken over alleged perjury.

The ministerial inquiry was launched in 2018 after Abdilla was placed on forced leave and later alleged corruption and bribery at the heart of MCAST’s operations in an angry email to the education ministry.

But the inquiry disproved her allegations and instead, the tables were turned against her: whistleblowers came forward saying they had been pressured by Abdilla in selecting favoured candidates for MCAST teaching jobs.

She has denied the accusation in a lengthy right of reply to MaltaToday, despite the clear findings of the inquiry.

The education ministry has spent months refusing to answer this newspaper’s questions on the contents of the inquiry report and whether Abdilla was still being paid her full salary since placed on leave in 2018.

Abdilla had also alleged that MCAST’s former chairperson of the board of governors, Silvio De Bono, had solicited a one-month salary as commission from MCAST recruits.

She claimed that despite being “so upset with the practice”, she had apparently placated Debono by having her own daughter take up a course at Debono’s own private educational institute, IDEA, for which she paid €500.

De Bono was surprised at the accusation, when he testified before the board of inquiry, stating that he was under the impression of having had a good working relationship with Abdilla.

He denied having demanded any such ‘commission’ from MCAST staff.

Yet Abdilla offered neither evidence for this allegation, nor a proper reason for her apparent inclination to ‘force’ her daughter to attend an IDEA course.

When asked to provide evidence for her allegation, Abdilla later retracted the serious accusation.

“It’s a joke,” she told the inquiry, denying that De Bono had taken such a bribe.

The inquiry concluded, in its findings, that Abdilla had attempted, for reasons known to her, to create traces for a crime that had never happened.

Asked to comment about these findings this week, Abdilla told MaltaToday she had not read the conclusions of the inquiry report and refrained from commenting on the way her testimony had been reported.