The government is working on a new labour migration policy to balance out the "burden" of foreign workers in Malta with economic growth, Prime Minister Robert Abela said on Sunday.
During a political activity in Żebbuġ, Abela said that the government had delivered a budget that focused on improving people's quality of life and that the government is committed to delivering policy that strengthens this goal.
This is why, he said, the government had undertaken efforts to restrict the number of foreign workers working as food couriers or cab drivers, as the market had become saturated and people were "uncontrollably" entering the country.
Abela said that despite fomenting "sentiments" against foreign workers, the PN had asked to see what evidence these decisions had been based on.
"To that I say we always act in favour of Malta, because Malta comes before everything," he said.
He said that the cabinet will be discussing a labour migration policy this week with the aim of launching it before the end of the year.
"This will address the realities of our people and balance it so that our country is not burdened with too many foreign workers," he said.
"We are going to undertake a study that is calibrated to the needs of our people. We will only accept the foreign workers who are truly needed. Those who are needed can come, but those who are not needed will not get in."
Abela said that the government was shifting its policy priorities, to focus on economic development rather than economic growth.
Instead of focusing solely on growing the country's GDP, this aims to put that growth into action by bettering people's quality of life, he explained, saying that the government was focused on delivering better health services, more green spaces, better road infrastructure and traffic management and a stronger education system.
Economic development also meant looking at key industries in the country and seeing how they could provide more quality jobs for people rather than a large number of jobs in one go, Abela added.
The PN, he said, had no vision to enact anything of the sort and in fact, had failed to publish its pre-budget document because it was not up to par and needed beefing up.
"The situation would be laughable if we weren't discussing something so serious," he said.
Despite portraying themselves as an alternative government, the PN had no idea what was going on in the country and could not string together a coherent view for a potential budget, Abela said.
"Imagine they were governing and they had to come up with a real budget, they would give up and just not do it," he said.