The head of the Maltese Public Service, Mario Cutajar has announced his intention to retire later this month.
Mr Cutajar (pictured) said he had informed Prime Minister, Robert Abela about his intention as early as last September.
He said Mr Abela had asked him to see through the last session of Parliament and help a new Government get things in order.
“I feel that now is the time to leave this post to the next pair of hands,” Mr Cutajar said in an address to the closing session of a week-long Public Service conference.
“I have no words to thank every one of you. I thank you from the bottom of my heart,” he said to a round of applause from the gathered of public officials.
A former Deputy General Secretary of the General Workers’ Union, Mr Cutajar has headed the Public Service since 2013, appointed on the same day as Joseph Muscat was sworn in as Prime Minister.
In the past, he worked in the Private Secretariat of Prime Ministers, Dom Mintoff and Karmenu Mifsud Bonnici and was a Parliamentary Assistant to Labour MP, Glenn Bedingfield when he served as a Member of the European Parliament.
More recently, he locked horns with the Parliamentary Ombudsman following that official’s criticism of the Public Service.
Addressing the same conference, Mr Abela described Mr Cutajar as a “loyal, well-read, and cultured man” focused on what he wanted to achieve and how to implement it.
Valetta, 8 May 2022
