Letters to the editor - May 23, 2026

Health service problems

Albert Cilia-Vincenti of Attard writes:

The leader about political party plans for improving the welfare state’s health service (‘Two plans for the same crisis’, May 18) included contributing factors to the brain drain problem, such as “inadequate pay, difficult working hours and failure to recognise returning specialists with appropriate consultant posts”.

Doctors in a hospital ward. Photo: Shutterstock.com

It failed to mention that our social security department deducts most of the Malta contributory national insurance (NI) pension of doctors (and nurses) who also have a service pension of the UK national health service (NHS).

This contributory NI pension theft, which breaks the national insurance contract between our state and its worker, has been going on for several decades under both Labour and Nationalist administrations.

These health service (and other public service) workers need to be fully compensated for this Malta NI pension theft injustice. Perhaps it is about time the president should intervene on behalf of these pensioners.

We now learn of a proposed Machiavellian sounding plan to offer an annual “€1,000 super bonus” only to Maltese workers, suggesting Maltese and third country nationals will be paid differently for the same jobs in the health service. If such a plan goes through, how could we claim our health service to be an equal opportunity employer of a democratic EU country?

PN’s desperate pledges

Eddy Privitera of Naxxar writes:

Desperate political parties and politicians end up making desperate electoral promises. This is why Alex Borg and his desperate Nationalist Party came up with the promise to reduce the price of electricity consumption by 30%. They said this after having been declaring for years that subsidies for electricity, gas, petrol and diesel were “unsustainable”, “short term”and “short-lived”.

So, the PN announced an investment of €60 million in solar panels to generate enough electricity to do away with the LNG tanker in Marsaxlokk. Even without the need for subsidies. Joseph Muscat, who also happens to be very well versed in economics, has calculated that such a project would need a space 150 times the size of the Floriana granaries.

Another desperate electoral promise by the PN is the “petrol station in the middle of the Mediterranean Sea”. What Borg and his desperate advisors seemingly had not known is that the person who approached them with this project had already gone to see the prime minister to sell him this project but failed to persuade him due to a number of obvious mistakes in the presentation.

When journalists asked him about this PN project, the prime minister revealed that Borg tried to dupe voters into believing that such a project can inject in Malta’s economy “€400 million a year”. Robert Abela told journalists he had the presentation in hand, which indicated €105 million not €400 million.

It has now been revealed that the person who persuaded the PN to accept its “petrol station in the middle of the Mediterranean Sea” project, Oliver Cini, is not even an engineer. So one wonders who is behind the PN’s mass-transport project.

All this proves, once again, that while it is so easy for all political parties to make attractive electoral pledges, it will ultimately end up a question of credibility.

Labour has a long track record of delivering on its electoral pledges, even, at times, doing much more than promised. The PN’s record is a very dismal one. It started way back in the 1951 or 1952 PN manifesto, when they promised to rebuild the Royal Opera House, in Valletta and kept promising this for decades. Just take a look at what they delivered when you next go to Valletta.

Later, that famous “Lm5 per week for housewives “ and “abolishing income-tax” in their 1971 manifesto, which never saw the light of day. And, much nearer to the present times, the promise to create 5,000 IT jobs at SmartCity and to slash income tax from 35% to 25%, which the PN did not honour but Muscat did.

That is why voting PN on May 30 is a classic case of cutting off one’s nose to spite one’s face. The Maltese equivalent , let’s just say, is far too descriptive to quote in Times of Malta.