Updated | Inmates paid ‘commercial’ rates for work, CHOGM to effect payment

The fashion designer who runs a prison charity that trains female inmates to be seamstresses, has denied having delayed any payments to some 14 prisoners on the ‘Love Faith Forgiveness’ (LFF) project.

Thousands in euros are still owing to Corradino Correctional Facility (CFF) from clients of the LFF project – which have included St Vincent de Paule home for the elderly, for curtains sewn by the inmates; and the CHOGM task force for 400 costumes used during the November summit.

Around €16,000 is owed to the participating inmates according to The Times, and which MaltaToday understands has to be disbursed in payments to the individual inmates by CCF once the money is paid by the clients.

An OPM spokesperson has since the press conference told MaltaToday that the CHOGM task force has effected payment, although this newspaper has not confirmed the exact amount outstanding.

In a press conference led by Michelle Muscat, patron of the Marigold Foundation, the press met one of the CCF inmates who had been on the LFF project for the past two years.

“I’m aware that the payments are taking long to come. But we have already been partly paid in September for a previous job, and since then we started and completed another job for which we are yet to be paid,” the inmate confidently told the press during a visit to the CCF’s classrooms.

“Mary Grace tells me she does her best to get the clients to pay, and she always does,” the inmate told journalists.

Under the LFF project, prison inmates have been taught the trade by Pisani.

MaltaToday sought to understand whether inmates were being paid fair prices for their work, to which fashion designer Mary Grace Pisani of Fersani Fashion insisted that they were being paid commercial rates. “The rates at which they are paid are similar to the ones you would be charged if you go to seek the services of someone outside these walls, net of the add-on costs for their work.”

LFF sells the finished product to the clients at market rates, Pisani said, while the Marigold Foundation said any surplus is to be used to assist inmates leaving the prison to set up their own trade and to pay NI contributions for the work done during their time at CCF.

Inmates who have learnt the trade from Pisani carry out the jobs voluntarily. Michelle Muscat insisted that LFF was not a company; it did not seek out business and did not have a cash flow to disburse ongoing payments. But it could only pay out the money as and when a clients’ job is completed and finally paid.

On request by MaltaToday and other newspapers, Pisani furnished journalists with the rates at which inmates are paid, all individually priced according to the kind of the job they are doing: lined curtains paid at €6.80 per metre, for example.

The costing of inmates' labour

Pisani insisted that the labour rates paid to the inmates are almost identical to that paid to any seamstress, net of the costs usually topped up for sewing aids.

The finished product is sold to the clients at market rates, and the surplus from the cost price – which includes the labour rates paid to the inmates – is kept within the LFF.

The Marigold Foundation insisted that the surplus of anything sold was being retained to create a fund for the eventual payment of national insurance contributions; a 10% contribution for victim support; the costs of maintaining the LFF’s sewing machines and other sewing aids; and for future projects to assist the inmates to set up their own trade once they leave prison.

In a story published earlier today, the Times of Malta set much store by the fact that Muscat’s Marigold Foundation had endorsed LFF, and that payments for St Vincent de Paul curtains and the CHOGM costumes had not yet been disbursed.

Michelle Muscat however reiterated that payments had been already partly made in February.

On her part, Pisani said that she had recently contracted the swine flu (H1N1) from the prison inmates during a recent outbreak that even claimed one life; and that her illness had delayed the costings for the jobs, for which the CCF uses to issue an invoice to the clients.

Muscat was visibly annoyed at the story appearing in The Times, and made no secret of it. "We want this country to rise up... and not give in to partisanship and negative media stories."