Plans for renewal of management agreement criticised

Labour MP Joe Mizzi said yesterday that with the mail service in a shambles, it was shameful that the government appeared to be preparing to renew the Maltapost management agreement with Transend, the New Zealand Post subsidiary.

Mr Mizzi said in parliament that that it was clear that New Zealand Post, which also has a 35 per cent stake in Maltapost, was only interested in making money.

The chief executive had even had the cheek to declare that one could not expect a return to a next day delivery service.

Renewing the contract with this company was unacceptable.

Mr Mizzi was speaking near the end of the second reading debate on a bill to implement budget measures.

In his speech, Mr Mizzi hit out at the government for having raised the tax burden and for failing in job creation. It was the duty of the trade unions to defend the workers and to make the government realise it should either take proper action, or make way for another government, he said. That was what happened in all democratic countries. Indeed, it was ironic that the UHM had not joined the GWU in its actions, when it was well aware of the current situation. Defending the workers did not mean harming the country.

The government was increasingly showing it had no solution to current problems.

Many of the problems were the result of the government's own decisions. The Malta postal service used to be the cheapest and the most efficient around, but after New Zealand Post were brought in to run it, many workers were moved elsewhere and mail distribution was in a disastrous state.

Earlier in the debate, Labour MP Joe Brincat said that in the budget, the government has introduced austere fiscal measures rather than measures to stimulate the economy. The effects of such measures were most evident during the Christmas period when sales were very low.

The government needed to create the proper economic environment for foreign direct investment to flourish once again in Malta. In the tourism industry businessman were increasingly being encouraged to invest elsewhere.

The new tax on the sale of inherited property would not bring about the expected revenue for the government as most would refrain from selling due to the new tax.

Helena Dalli (MLP) praised the GWU for its public protest in Valletta. Many Labourites who had believed the Nationalist Party's promises were among those present, she observed.

Despite the need for investment, Malta Enterprise had become a political ballgame with much delay and confusion during its setting up after the minister responsible for economic affairs was changed and recruitment was started afresh, Mrs Dalli said.

At the same time, potential investors were reported to have given up on Malta because of excessive bureaucracy.

Malta Enterprise chairman Joe Zammit Tabona in an interview in The Times failed to mention the agency's targets for the next three years. He spoke on projects being approved but few projects had actually begun to operate. Indeed, his comments were vague and raised more questions than they answered.

Mr Zammit Tabona failed to mention the importance of SMEs to the economy. Following the demise of IPSE, the SMEs now did not have any reference point for investment opportunities.

Mrs Dalli also referred to Dr Gonzi's warning in another Times interview that dockyard employees were risking their job if they failed to get their act together. It was not fair to blame the workers for the dockyard's problems while ignoring the management's failures and excesses, such as in a recent case where, following the amalgamation of two sections, a quantity of valuable machinery was classified as scrap and removed by a private contractor.

Charles Buhagiar (MLP) said Malta's main problems were government inaction and lack of competitiveness. Even on such small things as the removal of air conditioners in Valletta, the responsible authorities had felt the need to set up a committee.

Mr Buhagiar said it was totally untrue that demonstrations such as that held by the GWU served to discourage investment, as government speakers claimed. Such demonstrations were a basic democratic right, exercised in all democratic countries.

But rather than complain about demonstrations, the government needed to discuss how its own actions were discouraging investment and tourism - actions such as a heavier tax burden, persistent civil service inefficiency and placing a landfill near Mnajdra.

Nationalist MP Mario Galea said it was evident from speeches by Dr Sant and others, that the manifestations planned by the MLP had nothing to do with the employment situation, and everything to do with bringing down the government - just months after it was democratically elected by the people.

The employment situation was not any worse than it had been under the Labour government. Indeed, the gainfully occupied population had risen substantially since. But the opposition was ignoring figures and was bent only on doom and gloom.

Dr Sant had gone so far as to say that the prime minister should "go." The Nationalist Party was proud of Dr Fenech Adami who had won five out of six general elections and a referendum.

The country's problems would not be solved by street protests and they would actually only fuel uncertainty. A recent protest by dockyard workers had only led to the loss of a contract worth Lm1 million.

Current problems were not new. In 1983, Dr Sant had suggested that employees should be paid less than the minimum wage for their work. Therefore his solution to employment problems at the time was cheap labour, a stark contrast to the present government's policies centred on greater investment in workers through increased training provided by the ETC and MCAST.

Joe Abela (MLP) said the country's financial situation was very different to what the PN had inherited when it took government in 1987, and the MLP could not therefore be blamed for the deficit and the debt. Nor could the government blame the Labour Party for the wave of redundancies Malta was experiencing.

The government needed to rein in its spending and put in place better mechanisms to control it, including allocating more resources to the Auditor-General.

The culture of borrowing the government had taken on had also spread to the general public, as a recent report by the National Statistics Office showed. The people needed to be shown that they should not live beyond their means. The government could not ignore social development, in the same way as it could not ignore economic development. It was an undeniable fact that the number of broken families was growing, as was the number of single mothers. The government needed to act to prevent poverty that stemmed from social problems.

Winding up, parliamentary secretary Tony Abela said that before making their criticism, it would have been wiser for the opposition speakers to recall what the situation had been under the Labour government, including the way that workers were punished for participating in the Mnarja protests in 1982.

Dr Abela said that the key to future growth was worker training in different sectors to enable job mobility. The present government enlarged the university and opened MCAST and ITS thus preparing a generation of workers for new challenges. In contrast, the biggest failure of the Labour governments of the past was in this sector.

It was this government which created new work opportunities for the Maltese. Some 12 per cent of Malta's GDP was currently contributed by the financial services industry, which did not exist under Labour.

This government also created new export opportunities for Maltese industries. One of the biggest advantages of EU membership was precisely this.

This government had also extensively updated legislation to benefit workers - including the Employment and Industrial Relations Act and the Occupational Health and Safety Act.

It was being said that unemployment had risen. But if the government was to lay down that all those registering for work would have to go on compulsory cultural tours every day, he was sure that hundreds, if not thousands of them would suddenly say they were in employment. Everybody knew of people who registered for work and then worked illegal, earning more than ministers. It was for this reason that the government wanted better law enforcement. He was calling on the ETC to step up checks.

Similarly, he felt that a substantial amount of people were receiving social benefits they were not really entitled for. This also amounted to theft from Maltese taxpayers.

The government was not ashamed of having raised VAT to better fund health services. Malta should continue to have the fifth best health service in the world, but, here again, the people needed to realise that everything had a cost.

The government had also set up Malta Enterprise to better focus investment promotion.

The new spring would arrive, but every spring was preceded by an autumn and a winter. No one should have expected a new spring in the first three months of the legislature. The new spring would be the result of hard work during the autumn and the winter - in sectors such as civil service reform, which took a long time to bring about.

The government was preparing the people for the diversity that Malta would face in the future. The foundations had been laid and they would continue to be built upon, with attention being given against waste.

The bill was later given a second reading, the opposition voting against.