The Prime Minister yesterday held a meeting with the General Workers Union (GWU) following an urgent request.

The two sides discussed the latest developments on the issue and agreed to remain in contact.

Meanwhile in a statement yesterday evening Air Malta stated that over the past years it made several formal attempts to sell Selmun Palace as a going concern without any success.

Earlier yesterday GWU secretary general Tony Zarb told a press conference that two prospective bidders were ready to buy the hotel and take on all of its 58 workers. Yet, the 58 employees were given termination notices last week. The hotel is a subsidiary of Air Malta and it accumulated more than €13 million in losses over the past few years. The hotel has been closed since January, although Air Malta continued incurring significant expenses related to the hotel’s wage bills, licences, insurances and other expenses.

Last week GWU condemned Air Malta’s actions, saying that the company acted illegally in making the employees redundant without first discussing with the union. GWU instructed its members not to attend a meeting called by Air Malta’s management.

In its statement Air Malta categorically denied reports it has received a €50m offer for the hotel. Since the last official attempt to sell the hotel fell through in April, the airline has not received formal offers by prospective investors. There are currently three investors that have expressed informal interest in aquiring it and Air Malta’s new board of directors is acitvely working to issue a Request for Proposals for prospective bidders.

With regard to the redundancies Air Malta said it has followed the correct procedures in line with the law.

Addressing the employees – who walked from the GWU’s Workers’ Memorial Building in Valletta to Auberge de Castille, in protest yesterday morning – the GWU secretary general said the union had met the two prospective bidders who are ready to buy the hotel and take on all its workers.

The workers carried posters reading Dħaqtu Bina (You Fooled Us), Agħtuna x-Xogħol li Wegħdtuna (Give Us the Jobs You Promised Us), Il-Gvern Inganna lill-Ħaddiema (The Government Deceived Workers).

One employee, Antonia Camilleri, who has been at Selmun Palace for 15 years, said her husband is a worker at the same hotel. Like many others, he has been working there for 30 years, she said, adding that it would be very difficult for them to find another job now that they were in their 50s.

Other employees who attended yesterday’s protest blamed, in particular, the way the castle’s refurbishment had been dealt with. The castle was never used to its full potential, they said, also questioning why the hotel has not been used to accommodate people serving as jurors in trials.

“We were always self-sufficient, and until the end of last October the hotel was full. We always did our utmost to ensure the smooth running of the hotel, and we made sacrifices. Our last collective agreement is 14 years old.”

Mr Zarb told them not to lose heart and said they were not to blame for the situation and should not be the ones to suffer. The decision to make the Selmun Palace Hotel employees redundant would affect more than 50 families, he said.

The union secretary general added that he hoped there weren’t plans for the property’s use to be changed to, say, residence for the elderly, without any obligations towards the hotel’s employees.

Mr Zarb refused to name the bidders he was referring to; he quoted them as saying that the government had been dragging its feet with respect to their bids.

Peter Davies, Air Malta’s CEO, said through a media statement last week: “This is the first of some difficult decisions being taken by the Board of Directors to save the airline and hundreds of jobs at Air Malta”.

To bolster its chances of selling the hotel as quickly as possible, Air Malta said it will be engaging with local estate agents to advertise the property through their international network.

An advert which appeared in a March 2010 edition of The Financial Times announced the Selmun Palace Hotel was again up for sale. At the time, prospective buyers were encouraged to submit their bids and ideas for the site after the Commissioner of Land turned down a previous €2 million bid, thought to have been submitted in early January 2010.

The government deemed the bid too low and later upped the hotel’s value to €8.4 million. When the second call for tenders closed in April, the Land Department had received two bids, from Caterina Vitale Company Ltd and Orbis Group International.

The former submitted a bid of nearly €8.6 million, just above the minimum requested, while the other company did not specify how much it was offering. Both these bids, however, again fell short of the government’s requirements.

In reply to a parliamentary question, Finance Minister Tonio Fenech had said the buyer would need to take on the whole company, including the employees.

Two prospective bidders were ready to buy the hotel and take on all of its 58 workers.