“Tonio Fenech was naïve and simplistic when he spoke about maids and national insurance. Of course no cleaning lady is going to pay national insurance. For a start, there’s all the paper work involved – and if you can deal with the paperwork then you’re unlikely

to be aiming for a job washing floors. But beyond that there’s the question of money”

I don’t know about you, but I’m tired of reading about the shenanigans down at the Sliema Local Council. Talk about Lilliput: What is there in that story that might be of interest to anybody outside petty partisan politics?

It doesn’t even have the titillation factor. Yet the newspapers run on and on with it as though the nation is galvanised by the antics of a mayor and his councillors. The nation clearly is not.

Yes, of course I think the mayor should resign – but not for political reasons or because of alleged attempts at bribery and taking illicit commissions (though that also). I think he should get out of the limelight and his public position because he clearly has personal issues which he needs to resolve. And he cannot resolve them beneath the full glare of publicity. He has to go for his own sake, more than anything else. What’s more important – getting his act together and his life back on track or digging his heels in as mayor?

The only purpose this sorry mess has served is to illustrate how right the prime minister was to keep Robert Arrigo out of his cabinet. The man got above himself on the strength of his electoral support and began to throw his weight around in parliament, demanding a cabinet position and sulking when he didn’t get it. At least he didn’t do a Marisa Micallef and trot over to Labour when he didn’t get what he wanted, but still he behaved really badly and caused a lot of trouble for others through selfish reasons that were the opposite of the altruism that should be manifested by a representative of the

people.

Last year, Arrigo achieved a sort of notoriety – or, if you subscribe to the thinking of Malta Today, fame – by agitating among a group of government backbenchers who went under the moniker of ‘the disgruntled MPs’. They were given much publicity by the John Dalli fan club.

But I always thought the prime minister knew what he was doing. I wasn’t at all comfortable with the messages I was picking up about Robert Arrigo and supposed patronage. Perhaps I had the wrong messages; perhaps not. He doesn’t come out of this fuss at all well, and it strikes me that if he behaved as claimed with a local council, then how would he have been as a cabinet minister?

So yes, the prime minister was right. I never liked those disgruntled MPs. The very idea of grown men sulking and stamping their feet because they don’t get what they want is anathema to me. It makes me wonder why they want it so keenly in the first place. Is it to be of service to the country? I hardly think so.

MISSUS CLEAN

Now it’s the finance minister and his maid, exposing what everyone knew already: That cleaning-ladies don’t pay national insurance and are not registered for tax. You’d think the finance minister, of all people, would have the good sense to say, “Look, our cleaner has got to be a registered part-time employee of this household, or we’re going to use a cleaning service and pay them.” But at the same time I sympathise with him because I know how impossible that is, unless you do what others do and put your household cleaning-lady on the company’s books, making her wages tax deductible to company income. And the finance minister couldn’t possibly do that because it’s not above aboard.

You’ve got to employ somebody by the book, which is unjustifiably expensive because it is not a cost incurred in production and comes straight out of your disposable income. And most houses don’t need that level of labour between 9am and 1pm or 9am and 5pm every day, anyway. Or you have to use the services of a cleaning company, something which I do to get the windows done and used to do to get the house cleaned. But that’s not practical on a regular basis because cleaning companies don’t always send the same people along and having strangers trawling round your house is not a good idea, and out of the question if you’re not at home yourself. And it costs quite a bit, too.

The third option is a Filipina maid brought in through an agency, which lots of homes here now have. But just imagine if the finance minister had one of those – a trip on a private jet and an imported maid. My goodness.

Tonio Fenech was naïve and simplistic when he spoke about maids and national insurance. Of course no cleaning lady is going to pay national insurance. For a start, there’s all the paper work involved – and if you can deal with the paperwork then you’re unlikely to be aiming for a job washing floors. But beyond that there’s the question of money.

Which cleaning lady can afford to pay around €100 a month in national insurance when she’s living from hand to mouth? Why would she be cleaning other people’s houses, then going back to clean her own, if it were not because she needs every last cent that comes her way? Perhaps it’s because he’s never had to live from hand to mouth, but the finance minister doesn’t know how when you’re in that situation, you don’t think about the future because there are too many problems in the present. Every day you wake up feeling like there’s a mountain to climb. Thinking about the future, when you’re living from hand to mouth, means worrying about how you’re going to get food onto the table for supper and settle the phone bill before the line is cut off.

Yes, cleaning ladies don’t have to pay tax or collect VAT because their earnings fall beneath the minimum threshold. But they still have to register for VAT and they still have to fill in those pesky returns, failing which they are fined several months’ earnings. And they might not have to pay income tax but they still have to fill in an income tax return and that’s a problem too – a huge problem. Also, they only fall beneath the income tax threshold if they are not married or if their husband is unemployed. If their husband earns a halfway decent amount, most of what they earn polishing furniture and sweeping steps is sucked up in income tax. And so it’s just not worth the while and most of them stay in the grey market.

The finance minister knows that clamping down on this situation would be utter insanity. It would be pointless and extremely damaging. There is little or no tax to be collected and, quite frankly, the system shores itself up: the women need the work and the households which employ them need to have the work done. If they can’t find Maltese women to do it, they will engage Filipinas or illegal immigrants and proceed as before.

If the finance minister wishes to contribute positively to the situation, rather than making things stricter he should make them more lax. It is wholly unrealistic to expect a cleaning lady to fill in returns for national insurance, VAT and income tax, or to pay almost a quarter of her earnings in national insurance. Cleaning ladies don’t earn much, but as self-employed persons they would have to pay national insurance at the minimum rate regardless of how much they earn. I can’t see how this can be done, and that’s almost certainly why the situation has been allowed to go on.

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