The Labour Party spokesperson for Social Solidarity, Marie-Louise Coleiro Preca, and Labour spokesperson for the Elderly, Silvio Parnis, said that over the past two months, the elderly in Madre Teresa wards at St Vincent de Paul home for the elderly, were restricted to watching only two Maltese television stations, TVM and NET, and some Italian stations.

They said that the elderly had requested access to stations such as One TV on numerous occasions but they were told that this was not possible due to faults in the system.

They added that the elderly were seeing this as a case of political discrimination and that a lot of them felt they had the right to watch the television station of their choice, not what was being imposed on them.

Ms Coleiro Preca and Mr Parnis argued that if this was truly a case of a faulty system, then it was a shame on the authorities for letting this situation prevail over two months. However if this was not due to faults, the situation smelled of political discrimination, as had happened in the 1960s when the newspaper of the Labour party was withheld from government hospitals.