Need for MLP increases - Sant

The government was getting increasingly detached from the Maltese peoples problems - underlining the need for the Labour Party to be the wall behind which the people could shelter, Opposition Leader Alfred Sant said yesterday.

Commenting during a walkabout at Qormi market, Dr Sant added that the purpose of next Sunday's protest would be to stress that the country needed a plan for economic and social recovery.

He said that while the market was usually thronged with shoppers, there were fewer people there yesterday, a trend he had noted in all open markets which party officials had visited.

Sellers and shoppers had both complained of a shortage of cash in hand, which was part of the economic and social problem that this country had. Quality of life was deteriorating and this situation needed to be tackled constructively. The MLP needed to come out with solutions to benefit the lower and middle income classes and not the cliques of a few people who always did well.

In another speech in Gozo, Dr Sant said that the economic situation on the sister island was continuing to worsen.

Official figures showed that unemployment now exceeded 700 with unemployment having risen by 15 per cent in the past year.

In one month alone, the jobless had risen by 100 and just over half of the unemployed in Gozo were youths.

The government, he claimed, lacked ideas and the Minister for Gozo had declared in parliament a year ago that she saw no possibility of big factories opening in Gozo, while Parliamentary Secretary Edwin Vassallo during the debate on the Chambray project raised doubts on the viability of more hotels there.

Yet, Dr Sant said, tourism offered the best chance for employment opportunities in Gozo.

Dr Sant explained that three months after the helicopter service was stopped, fresh salt had been rubbed into the wound with the announcement of the tariffs for a new service.

They were so high that they would not make the service viable and not help the tourism sector. In fact the government had seen the subsidy on the helicopter service as unnecessary, but did not shirk from spending millions on Dar Malta in Brussels, the investment in Brindisi harbour and the new hospital he stated.

The government should be ashamed, Dr Sant said, that Gozitans whose relatives were patients at St Luke's or Boffa hospitals were no longer benefiting from reduced ferry fares.