Ex-PL minister and MEP condemn plan to exclude foreigners from €1,000 bonus

Updated at 4.52pm with comments from former Labour Minister Evarist Bartolo

A former Labour MEP, minister, and a noted Labour figure have slammed Robert Abela's plan to exclude 100,000 foreign workers from the promised €1,000 handout for workers.

Addressing a Labour Party election campaign event on Saturday, the prime minister said that while the Nationalist Party had promised to reward all workers in Malta, the PL had found a way to leave thousands of foreign workers out of the plan to give a €1,000 “super bonus” to all workers who have lived in Malta for five years.

"[PN] said there are 300,000 workers in Malta - they got that right. We calculated the €1,000 on 200,000 workers. How? We worked it out over a number of months with legal and technical people, and we found a way of leaving 100,000 foreign workers out of the €1,000 grant.   

 "It's a legal method that is already in place," he said, adding that people would have to be in Malta for five years and working to be entitled to that amount. 

Reacting to the speech, former Labour MEP Cyrus Engerer said he was shocked by Abela’s words.

“I have been vocal every time the Nationalist Party fomented hatred against foreign workers. But yesterday’s speech by the Prime Minister shocked me even more. The leader of what is supposed to be the workers’ party, boasted about finding a legal loophole to exclude 100,000 foreign workers from a €1,000 grant - deliberately discriminating and deliberately stoking hate,” he wrote on Facebook.

Engerer added that every foreign worker in Malta worked hard, and that every registered worker paid taxes and contributed to National Insurance.  

All workers legally fulfil their obligations, and all should get the benefits that come with them. 

“A socialist party does not engineer exclusion. A socialist party does not celebrate finding ways to leave the most vulnerable workers behind. What was announced yesterday is not a policy. It is a betrayal of the very values Labour was built on.”

Former Labour Minister Evarist Bartolo also criticised the prime minister's plan in the Facebook comment section of a post made by psychologist Prof. Andrew Azzopardi.

Bartolo called the prime minister's proposal "shameful", saying Malta is a "republic built on the labour of slaves, as we were for many centuries".

Evarist Bartolo called the proposal 'shameful'. Photo: Facebook

"It is no surprise that we did not even have the courage at the United Nations to vote in favour of a resolution condemning slavery as the gravest crime against humanity," Bartolo said.

Meanwhile, former GWU official Jeremy Camilleri said as long as workers paid their taxes and NI contributions, they should never be deprived of benefits simply because they were not Maltese.

"No second-class workers," he wrote on Facebook.

Contacted by Times of Malta for his reaction to the speech, outgoing General Workers’ Union general secretary and PL candidate Josef Bugeja said the measure was not discriminatory if the five-year residence rule was applied equally. 

“I believe fairness requires that recognition be given to those who have made a long-standing contribution to Maltese society. The €1,000 grant reflects precisely that,” he said.