The biggest challenge Malta faces is in the sector of employment generation, declared Malta Labour Party leader Alfred Sant yesterday.
Speaking in Victoria, Dr Sant said that in spite of all its talk, the government is paralysed when confronted with the crisis in the job sector. In April 2004, when Lawrence Gonzi was appointed prime minister, he promised projects to generate employment in Gozo.
Yet, a year and seven months later, none of these promises were fulfilled and the Gozitans are left facing difficult times, with many people being discharged. Gozo Minister Giovanna Debono also said that the results were not favourable, no matter how hard she worked to attract foreign investment to the island, declared Dr Sant.
The opposition leader said Malta’s leadership is stagnant and lacks vision, direction and initiative.
The government fails to understand that people are uncertain about their future. It only seeks to trick the public by claiming all it does is to improve the quality of life, he declared.
Between 1999 and last year, the Malta Enterprise and the Malta Development Corporation only helped seven companies to set up shop in Gozo.
These companies only employ nine full-time workers and two on a part-time basis, continued Dr Sant.
The MLP leader also stated that between January 2002 and August this year, 570 jobs were lost within the Xewkija industrial sector. This constitutes 70 per cent of the employment within this sector.
He said that in the meantime, tourism in Gozo is in a critical state even though the sector should fuel job-creation. Over the last year, employment in tourism in Gozo registered a three per cent decrease and according to the National Statistics Office a little more than half of Malta’s tourists visit Gozo.
Dr Sant claimed that during the two years the MLP was in government between 1996 and 1998, an average of Lm77,000 a year was spent on embellishment projects in Gozo. In contrast, during six years in power, from 1999 to 2004, the Nationalist government spent an average of Lm33,000 a year and within this period, the funds allocated towards projects in Gozo dropped by 70 per cent.
The government’s sole aim is to control the financial hole and while doing so it is ignoring the employment sector, said Dr Sant. He accused the government of not having a sense of priorities. While it is spending Lm3 million on the Commonwealth meetings, it could not find the same sum of money for the restructuring of Sea Malta.
Dr Sant also said the government was full of contradictions. When it came to the hedging agreement for oil, the Nationalists had said they did not want to gamble with the people’s money. Yet in the same breath, Industry and Information Technology Minister Austin Gatt claimed he is ready to bet that within 10 years Malta will not have another textiles factory.
He said that airline companies such as British Airways, Ryan Air, Lufthansa and even Air Malta had all gone in for hedging agreements and saved a lot of money. Dr Sant also mentioned reports tabled in parliament showing incorrect government calculations on the electricity and water tariffs.
He repeated comments made in parliament (see page 12) regarding the mistakes he said Dr Gonzi made in his prediction of Malta’s economic growth. He said that according to the EU, Malta’s economy is due to develop by 0.8 per cent in the coming year.
This confirms that the economy is facing challenges and that there is a lack of employment, continued Dr Sant. He said the government needs to invest in employment generation. The Nationalist Party is not succeeding in this and therefore there is need for a change in government, he concluded.