On the day of my writing this the news came out that Malta recorded the highest government fiscal surplus in the European Union. Effectively it made 128 million euro more from income than it spent in the third quarter of 2018. Extrapolating that over a year the government is close to half a billion euro in surplus. On paper this seems like a laudable achievement and if the government was solely the financial controller of Malta, it would be considered so. However, it is not.

Malta unarguably is going through an economic boom, but economic booms never last. A government’s role is not only to make money, it is to improve the quality of life of its citizens, provide the framework for a brighter future and help those who really need it so that they are not just struggling to survive but can concentrate on achieving and progressing in life as well. It also has a duty to ensure that what is making us thrive now will not mean others will suffer in the future through environmental destruction and the loss of our natural and historical heritage.

Whilst there is a proportion of Maltese residents who are indeed enjoying the good times, not all are. We are all aware of the increasing number of people, even those holding regular jobs, who are finding it ever more difficult to afford to pay for a roof over their head; people living in garages, living in cars or moving back with their parents for want of any other option. Yet this government, since it came to power, must be the first since independence to have not yet invested one cent in social accommodation and affordable housing schemes. Instead it gives away prime public land at bargain basement prices to huge corporations so that they may make millions in profit.

The proportion of pensioners at risk of living in poverty has increased every year since 2013 and now stands at well over 20%. The pathetic increase in pensions offered by the government in the last budget barely make up for the real cost of living rise that always accompanies an economic boom. These are people whose work and sacrifice created the foundations on which our economy grows.

We are witnessing an orgy of destruction where hundreds if not thousands of trees are being uprooted and hectares of good agricultural land erased to widen roads in order to alleviate  our desperate traffic problem, yet we have not yet seen any tangible evidence of a long term policy to reduce our reliance on the automobile and introduce faster, cleaner, more reliable modes of mass transport. No studies on the viability of tramways, railways, the utilisation of our waterways have been commissioned. From commissioning to completion this will take years if not decades, yet at a time when we can afford to do things, we do nothing.

We live in a time of record GDP growth and de facto full employment, yet real wages are not increasing as our economic model is being fuelled by the mass importation of cheap non-EU labour, a practice encouraged by a government agency, JobsPlus. This is not sustainable, is fuelling the rise in accommodation costs, traffic congestion and environmental destruction, and increasing the wealth gap between the rich and the working poor.

A rethink of how to make our economy grow is long overdue.  Our government should be looking much more closely on how to improve this country’s citizens quality of life and sense of well-being and be less obsessed with statistics and being top of the class in the EU. It should be investing that surplus not accumulating it.

Anthony Buttigieg is an MEP candidate for Partit Demokratiku