The government is not interested in leading the country anymore, as it has done all the business it needed to do off the back of the country and its people, Opposition leader Adrian Delia said during his customary Sunday address.

Speaking at the PN’s club in Msida, Delia said that the consequences of the problems that the government had created were still coming and issued a rallying cry; saying that the PN would not milk the country dry and would instead lead it with responsibility.

During his speech, Delia noted that what Prime Minister Joseph Muscat had claimed as his government’s successes had in fact left countless victims.

He noted that the country’s youths are amongst those victims; saying that these youths will – considering the level of pay on offer – barely be able to afford to rent a roof over the heads let alone buy one.  He said that they are having no option but to leave the country, at which point they are replaced by foreigners who come to the country for a few months to “serve themselves and leave”.

The country’s workers are also victims, Delia said; victims of a Labour government that does nothing for these workers.  He said that while the government boasts of high employment rates, Maltese workers are barely getting enough salary to be able to live a decent life, adding that foreign workers coming to the island and being content with working for “€800 or €900 per month” were making it difficult for Maltese workers to compete and were keeping their wages down.

Women, who are earning 11% less than men for the same work and are essentially working for free for two months, are also victims.  “This is the most feminist government in history”, Delia noted sarcastically. 

The educational sector is a clear victim of the government’s lack of planning; “we do not have enough schools to teach our children, even though we are a country whose only resource is the people”, Delia said.  He noted that this was especially clear in Msida itself, where the locality’s primary school had been shut for two years.

Delia also commented on Malta’s air pollution problems, saying that there are 567 deaths caused by Malta’s bad air every year, noting that Joseph Muscat had replaced the so-called “cancer factory” that he used to speak of with an ever-increasing number of cars in our roads – almost 900 per month.

Speaking on Gozo, Delia listed the Labour Party’s promises for the island; a bridge, an airstrip, a casino, a cruise terminal, and a revamped healthcare system. He said that there is no sign of the bridge, the airstrip and the cruise terminal; that the casino was only there because the government was “gambling with the country’s destiny”, and that the supposed revamp to the healthcare system had come through a deal which he described as “one of the biggest obscenities in our history”.  

Delia also spoke of a proposal for the locality that he was speaking in, saying that Msida should be turned into a university town much akin to those abroad, with the thousands of youths attending University and Junior College breathing a new lease of life into the town.