Prime Minister Lawrence Gonzi, fresh from a five-day holiday in the UK where he attended his son’s graduation, said yesterday that Malta will have a national development plan as from next year.
Dr Gonzi, who was speaking at the Access facility in Cottonera, said he was still uncertain whether this plan will be a five-year plan or a three-year one, but it seems he will go for a three-year plan looking ahead beyond 2008, at least to 2010.
Dr Gonzi said this will not be a plan created by government and committing just the government: it will be drawn up with the participation of the whole of society and the public.
Dr Gonzi was launching the National Action Plan on Poverty and Social Exclusion (See page 9 for details). This two-year plan, together with the recently-published National Plan for Employment, the Convergence Plan submitted to the EU and the forthcoming plans on the sustainability of social welfare and on the pension reform, will all form building blocks leading to the National Development Plan. Other plans or building blocks will include reports on competitiveness, on the reform of the ports, on public transport and on the environment.
However, Dr Gonzi warned, government does not want itself to be submerged in a welter of reports: government insists on concrete action, on measurables and deliverables.
As an example of all this, Dr Gonzi and Social Policy Minister Dolores Cristina spoke about government’s plans for childcare facilities, in view of the plan’s target to increase women’s participation in the labour force.
Dr Gonzi pointed out that Malta enjoys an advantage over many other countries in that children over the age of three are already cared for, for free, on a national level. In other countries, school begins at age five.
However, kindergartens open only during the school year and there are no similar facilities for children under the age of three.
The childcare sector is still unregulated and unlicensed. Mrs Cristina said that she and minister Louis Galea have recently launched a consultation process, which ends at the end of this month, on what the standards and regulations of childcare facilities should be.
Government wants these childcare facilities to be more of the educare type, than just baby-sitting centres.
Following this consultation, the law will be drawn up and discussed by parliament next year.
Mrs Cristina reminded the media that a recent survey said that 45 per cent of presently inactive women have said they would be willing to go and work if they found childcare facilities which are affordable and safe. Pressure in this direction comes mostly, she added, from single mothers.
Asked about any forthcoming changes in the rent laws, Dr Gonzi replied that government has already changed the rent laws in 1995. Following this change, any of the 20,000 properties which are unused at present could be rented out according to the liberalised post-1995 regime. But, Dr Gonzi said, this did not work: the 20,000 properties have not been put on the market.
Government even tried to launch a scheme to help people rent properties through the Housing Authority but this also had only a limited degree of success.
Dr Gonzi admitted that the owners of property rented out at pre-1995 prices get very cheap rents for their property but said that if this issue is addressed, it would be to solve an injustice with the owners of these properties, not to get any of the 20,000 properties on the market.
A recent study, Dr Gonzi added, showed that while 30 per cent of the Maltese population are considered to be “at risk of poverty”, if the social transfers are excluded from the equation, once the social transfers are added, that is social assistance and welfare payments, the number of people at risk of poverty falls to 15 per cent. This, Dr Gonzi said, is a very god rate and shows the quality of Maltese social welfare.