Our families have every right to aspire to a better future. Prosperity means different things to different people. For a young family with both parents working to cope with the expenses of educating their children, prosperity may mean the ability to find the time and financial resources to enjoy the little free time they have with their loved ones.
For a family where one or more member is unemployed or seriously ill, prosperity may mean the ability to find decent employment or manage the cost of buying medicine without eroding the little savings that they may have. Society is made up of thousands of small units facing their own particular challenges in their quest to achieve prosperity and happiness.
It is our duty as politicians to help our families achieve their dreams of a better future. If we are to deserve our people’s trust we must be honest in our dealings with them. We will be deceiving those who trust us if we try to bribe them with short term favours on the eve of a general election, where our own future will be at stake, and then ignore the issues that will really affect their long term prospects of achieving prosperity.
It is about time that our long-suffering families are given back some of what has been taken away from them during the past several years under a Nationalist administration. They deserve this and more.
In fact, Labour has committed itself not only to confirm that it will honour all commitments made in the 2008 budget by the present administration, but to top that up with other benefits like the reduction in the water and electricity surcharge by 50 per cent to help our families cope with the rampant rise in the cost of living.
But we will not stop there. A Labour government will address those issues that will make the quest for prosperity in the medium to long term more achievable for our families. We will attack the worst kind of poverty that exists in our country: the inability of our young people to find decent employment because of gross under achievement in the educational field.
We must do what it takes to ensure that every young man and woman in Malta is given the chance to obtain sufficient qualifications to make him or her employable. We will not be happy with just building new schools and calling existing schools colleges, but will work with all the stakeholders to see why we are the worst performers in the EU in this crucial area. We will then agree on and implement a plan of action to start ridding the country of this plague.
We are equally determined to tackle the mediocrity that exists in the National Health Service. Hard-working families that have paid their taxes for several years on the assurance that the National Health Service would provide them with whatever care they needed to the required standard and for no charge, have a right to demand a vast improvement on what is being provided today.
But this is not what they are getting. Waiting lists for vital medical interventions are getting longer and the quality of life of most of our more elderly people is deteriorating because of the hassle they have to go through to get medical attention in time as and when they need it.
Unfortunately, this country is being grossly mismanaged as a result of a lethargic administration that has been in power for far too long. They work to guarantee their own future prosperity rather than that of the families they should be serving. They believe that, after years of neglect, they can bribe the electorate with promises of benefits that they have an obligation to give in any case.
We now need to turn a new page. Let our families enjoy the short-term benefits that, very understandably, are most welcome after years of belt-tightening, but let us also look at shaking this country out of the lethargy that has engulfed it over the last few years, and instil some new enthusiasm about the future by entrusting the country to a new team of political leaders. Let us give our families a chance to prosper.
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