Data Commissioner dismisses Enemalta workers’ complaints against Busuttil

The Data Protection Commissioner has rejected a complaint by a group of Enemalta employees that a personalized letter that was mailed to them by PN leader Simon Busuttil breached their privacy.

The letter in question -sent to Enemalta employees on 6 February 2015 - contained information relating to the partial privatization of Enemalta, the sale of the BWSC plant to Shanghai Electric, employment matters and transparency issues.

11 Enemalta complained that they had never authorised their employers to disclose their personal data, nor given their consent to the PN to contact them for political reasons.

In his decision, Data Commissioner Saviour Cachia ruled that Busuttil was justified in processing their data, pointing out that their names and roles and dates when they were initially employed were on Enemalta’s ‘eneinfo’ magazine and hence in the public domain.

However, he also requested Busuttil to delete all the complainants’ personal data from the party records and to adopt a process designed to inform people about the processing of their personal data, including their unconditional right to opt-out from being contacted.

“The necessary internal measures should be in place to ensure that those individuals who exercise their right to opt-out are easily identified and their personal data removed, with immediate effect, from the contact database,” he wrote.