Yet Another Resignation At Maltapost
Yet another hiccup at Maltapost following the partial privatisation and takeover of management by New Zealand’s Transend, with the expatriate occupying the second most senior management post tendering his resignation.
Maltapost’s general manager (postal services), Pat Burke, has tendered his resignation. The Maltapost board of directors is believed to have accepted Mr Burke’s resignation. Maltapost said that Mr Burke relinquished his post for personal reasons.
The post of general manager (postal services) is one of two top management posts for which Transend is directly responsible. The persons who are chosen to fill in these posts are handpicked by the New Zealand company.
Pat Burke’s resignation comes only a few months after Bob McGregor was dismissed from the post of CEO with Maltapost. Mr McGregor was dismissed even before the completion of the new business plan for Malta’s postal services operator. The Maltapost board, including the two directors appointed by Transend, agreed that Mr McGregor should be dismissed.
Bob McGregor was later replaced by another New Zealander, Robert Lake. Mr Lake, a former senior manager at New Zealand Post (Transend’s mother company), was in the centre of a political controversy in New Zealand just weeks before taking up his new job in Malta. This was because Mr Lake was given a NZ$208,000 (Lm43,000) golden handshake in 2001 despite New Zealand’s prime minister Helen Clark had vowed to end such practices.
It is not known what were the actual reasons that led Pat Burke to quit the post of general manager (postal services).
The Maltese government had claimed that the granting of a 35% equity stake to Transend and the contracting out of management to the same company would be highly beneficial to Maltapost.
