The government's blanket silence on the performance, or lack thereof, of its woman in Asia Sai Mizzi Liang is simultaneously unacceptable and symptomatic of its modus operandi of attempting to ignore a problem for long enough in the hope that it will just go away.

But the fact of the matter is that the €13,000 a month salary afforded to the wife of Energy and Health Minister Konrad Mizzi will undoubtedly continue to haunt the government until election day. Many have been the jokes cracked about this situation over the last two and a half years but the joke is, ultimately, on us - the taxpaying public.

On the face of it, such a salary appears somewhat exorbitant but, in realty, if the government wants to compete with the private sector for the best people, it needs to match the best private sector wages.

But, on the other hand, imagine if you will for argument's sake that the wife of a company's chief executive officer was put on that company's payroll at €13,000 a month and the company's board of directors refuses to even attempt to justify that salary in any way, shape or form.  That board would be facing some very serious questions from its shareholders come Annual General Meeting time.

This newspaper, and in fact the rest of the country's independent media, has hounded the government from practically day one of Mrs Mizzi Liang's dubious appointment as Malta Enterprise's trade envoy to Asia on behalf the government's shareholders - the taxpaying public - but to no avail whatsoever.

Just this week another section of the press was told by Malta Enterprise that her performance was confidential in that it was 'commercially sensitive' - much the same excuse as the government has provided for many of the major public contracts that it has signed over the last three years.

What we do know is that since her appointment, and the frequently-criticised astronomical salary that came with it, Mrs Mizzi Liang's unknown performance and unknown tangible deliverables have been called into question repeatedly.

The government has said she played an important yet unexplained role in the deal struck between Shanghai Electric and Enemalta. She was also said to have been responsible for attracting Chinese multinational telecommunications company Huawei to Malta, where the company is meant to be testing its avant-garde 5G mobile technology.

The highly contentious contract of employment between Malta Enterprise and Mrs Mizzi Liang is due to expire at the end of August.  Her husband, on being elected Labour's deputy leader recently has said that she will not seek to renew that contract.

That is all well and good, but the fact is that by the end of her contract this August, Mrs Mizzi Liang will have been paid €468,000 for her three year's work for Malta Enterprise.  Between today and then she will have earned another €65,000, and the media is being told, in effect, that what she has delivered in return for such payment cannot be disclosed - in short, that it is none of anyone's business.

For the amount of money being paid to Mrs Mizzi Liang to attract Asian business to the country, the country is more than entitled to answers, but none have been forthcoming and, at this rate, none are expected.