No notice given of registration fees cut, Muscat complains

Motorists who bought a second-hand car at the end of last year had to fork out higher registration fees than if they had waited a few weeks, due to an unadvertised change in costs, Labour leader Joseph Muscat said yesterday.

He accused the government of not being fair with consumers, saying some had paid up to €3,000 more than had they waited just a few weeks.

Questioned about this, a Finance Ministry spokesman said the registration tax on second hand cars was updated regularly to reflect international price movements.

But although saying the reduced registration fees were positive, Dr Muscat complained that the public had not been informed that the way vehicle registration fees were being calculated was going to change; they would have saved money had they waited a few more weeks.

Yesterday, Dr Muscat also criticised the take-it-or-leave-it offer made to bus owners in relation to the public transport reform, adding that this was not consultation but dictatorship.

However, in reaction the Transport Ministry said several consultation meetings and a long exchange with the Public Transport Association had taken place.

Dr Muscat also voiced his disappointment at the planning authority reform, since the Bill presented to Parliament gave the responsible minister the power to draw up new regulations. He stressed that Malta needed a drastic culture change when it came to planning since a number of existing regulations were not being followed.

Dr Muscat also asked how the Malta Environmental and Planning Authority would be discussing the extension of the Delimara power station on Thursday when the government had refused to discuss the issue in Parliament pending the conclusion of the auditor's report on corruption allegations. He said this was a case of double standards and added that the contractor who won the tender had already imported raw materials needed for the extension.

He also spoke about the new water and electricity tariffs, saying the party would challenge the legal notice introducing the new rates in Parliament.

In a lighter moment, Dr Muscat said he frequently joked with Joseph Cuschieri, who was elected as an MEP but will only take his seat once the Lisbon Treaty is enacted, that he was still on the waiting list.

But problems in healthcare were not a joking matter and he was hearing of more and more people who were waiting for treatment, he said. These included a man who had been waiting for a hip replacement for three years and whose inability to work had put his family on the brink of poverty.

"We need a properly functioning charter of patient rights, specifically stating maximum waiting times for surgery," he said. When this period elapsed, the authorities would have to pay for the operation to be done privately, he proposed.

Dr Muscat noted that a report by the auditor general said medical equipment bought by the government had been loaned out to the private sector, which meant that patients needing certain tests had to pay to use equipment bought through tax money.

In reaction, the Health Parliamentary Secretariat pointed out that the National Audit Office could not find a correlation between the loaning out of medical equipment and waiting lists at the national hospital. A spokesman for the secretariat also told The Times that equipment was loaned out when it was not needed or being used in the public sector.

Speaking about the recent case of identity theft, Dr Muscat said he was surprised that the ID cards office did not compare signatures when issuing a card. He said in a similar case, a man had been complaining to the authorities that somebody was registered as living in his garage since 2003 but nothing had been done about this case.

In a statement, the Nationalist Party said Dr Muscat's sole ambition was to become Prime Minister while families were more concerned with bread and butter issues, like jobs, education, an efficient health system and a clean and healthy environment.

"The more Dr Muscat speaks, the less he convinces; his ambition to become Prime Minister is not accompanied with substance, policies, vision and ideas. No wonder that when people hear Dr Muscat speaking, they ask themselves 'Where is the beef?'," the PN said.

It said that while Dr Muscat spent time spreading doom and gloom, the government was busy creating more and better jobs in synch with the people's priorities.