The Nationalist Party noted on Monday how the Film Commissioner Johann Grech has received salary bump, increasing his yearly income to €150,000 despite being under investigation by the Auditor General “after spending millions in public money”.

In September of last year the National Audit Office accepted a request by the Nationalist Party to investigate the expenditure of €137 million by the Malta Film Commission on foreign organisations between September 2018 and 2023.

The PN said that the Minister of Tourism Clayton Bartolo continues to evade answering Parliamentary Questions and “refuses to publish the figures of the Film Awards and the Mediterrane Film Festival, among others.”

“He also did not publish the Impact Assessment Report in full, but only released part of it because he said he did not trust the Opposition. It was also he who refused to disclose how much David Walliams was paid to host one evening and we only found out now that he was paid €120,000.”

The said that these events are happening during a time when people’s most concerning issues is the high cost of living.

“The priorities of the Labour Party are all wrong,” the PN said in a statement.

“They find money for their own interests, but cannot find funds for teachers and continue to refuse to remove the tax on COLA.”

The PN said that these actions show how the Government is more interested in finding excuses than solutions to address the challenge of the high cost of living.