News

BoV Employees Foundation Elections

The GWU’s Professionals, Finance & Services Section (that represents many BoV employees) congratulates the newly elected Bank employees to the posts of members of the Board of Trustees of the BoV employees’ Foundation this Friday.

The GWU notes that unfortunately the election, which is normally held between Bank employees who run independently, was controversially affected by an attempt by the MUBE to promote a block vote of three specific candidates that were presented through MUBE circulars and initiatives to be promoted amongst Bank employees as endorsed candidates. This initiative also implied the intent to remove existing Trustees seeking re-election without consideration of the valid work done by Trustees in the past years for all Bank employees.

The GWU criticised this initiative of MUBE and appealed to Bank employees to not support this MUBE list. Fortunately, the maturity of Bank employees prevailed and on the close of submission of proxies it was evident that the block vote initiative failed drastically. So much so that the three candidates, who were promoted by MUBE in the block vote form, withdrew their nominations a few hours before the election. Thus the other three candidates were elected automatically, notwithstanding that they already held the support of the overwhelming absolute majority of proxies of eligible voters.

This was a strong message by Bank employees that there is no room for block voting in an autonomous Bank foundation and also proved that Bank employees rejected the promoted block vote of MUBE. The GWU is therefore satisfied that maturity and reason prevailed and hopes that the MUBE will realise that such initiatives are unwelcome and doomed to fail.

The BoV Employees’ Foundation was established in the nineties when the Bank was partly privatised. The aim of the Foundation was for Government to assist Bank employees to collective own shareholding in the Bank and to set-up investments for BoV employees. The Foundation was set-up by the Government along with the two Bank unions, GWU and MUBE. It was to be managed autonomously and independently by Bank employees who are the beneficiaries of the Foundation.