A paint supplies company which was convicted in the VAT fraud scandal was awarded a €48,000 government contract by the Contracts Department just months after the court verdict, Labour leader Joseph Muscat said yesterday.
Despite the fraud of some €10 million in the VAT Department, the government had not acted to ensure somebody assumed responsibility, he said.
Speaking at the party's May 1 celebrations in Fgura, Dr Muscat yesterday challenged the Prime Minister to allow his MPs a free vote on a parliamentary debate on the power station extension project contract.
He also challenged Dr Gonzi to agree to have Thursday's debate transmitted live on state television "so that families would know who is protecting their interests and who is not".
Dr Muscat said the Labour Party would be showing solidarity with Marsaxlokk residents "in a peaceful but resolute manner" on Wednesday by visiting families living close to where the government is proposing to extend the power station. The south had been reduced to a "rubbish dump", he said. Dr Muscat said he wanted to show the government, on the eve of a parliamentary debate about the controversial extension contract given to Dutch company BWSC, that the people had "woken up".
The Labour leader was referring to the controversy surrounding the tendering process in relation to the contract for the supply of a 144-megawatt diesel power plant at the Delimara power station for a value of €165 million, which was criticised by the Auditor General in a report.
Among other things, the Auditor said the contract, signed behind closed doors last year, was drawn up hastily.
Dr Muscat said that whatever the result of the vote on the motion his party was presenting, the PL would be announcing in the coming days what it planned to do about this case, as well as others, if it was elected to government.
The Labour leader spoke at length about the €200 million power station contract, accusing the government of wanting people to accept an experiment with their health through a prototype plant.
Although it had been stated that similar plants existed in Cyprus and Corsica, the Auditor General's investigation into the awarding of this contract had proved this claim to be untrue. The government, he said, did not even want to publish the contract, but then changed its position and asked BWSC permission to publish. This was humiliating for Malta, he said, adding that the government should not take orders from anyone, let alone a foreign company.
He accused the government of being unwilling to halt political corruption and described corruption as a tax. The Labour Party would not permit Malta to become another Greece, he said, which was paying the price for rampant corruption.
He said the government had lost the values of which it was so proud and was instead making families pay through their noses for water and electricity. He also criticised the government for failing to implement a pre-election promise to reduce the maximum income tax rate.
Dr Muscat promised policemen, soldiers and members of the Civil Protection Department the right to join a union but without the right to strike.
He also criticised the government for fixing the price of public transport for just three years, "coincidentally" until the next general election.