Malta is being taken over by outsiders, 40 years after Freedom Day, because its economy has become overly-dependant on foreigners, Opposition leader Adrian Delia said on Sunday
He told a PN activity in Kalkara that he had joined the President and the prime minister in laying flowers on the Freedom Monument in Vittoriosa, but the irony was that this government had made Malta dependent on foreigners.
According to what the prime minister himself had said, Malta’s pensions could only be sustained if foreign workers were brought to Malta. Economic growth depended on the inflow of foreign workers; a metro system would only be viable if the population grew with foreign workers. And that too applied for the viability of the Gozo tunnel.
Read: Not enough people to justify metro connection
The presence of an excessive amount of foreign workers was undermining what was truly Maltese and putting downward pressure on salaries, Dr Delia said.
And most foreign workers, those brought to Malta from outside the EU, were treated as little more than slaves.
He had been handed copies of work contracts which showed how these workers were paid just 4.50 euros per hour, and then they had ‘further deductions’, he said.
They ended up paying up tax of just 55c per month. So was this how pensions were to be sustained?
Tourism Minister forging ahead with controversial Corinthia land deal
Turning to the controversial Corinthia land deal, which had to be withdrawn following opposition by business leaders, environmental activists and the PN, Dr Delia observed that it had been reported that Dr Mizzi was forging ahead with a deal to hand over hundreds of thousands of square metres of land for just €17 million. Yet sources who spoke to Il-Mument said the amount of land set for developments related to the tourism sector would decrease.
Under the original deal, the land was set to be developed into a six-star hotel, apartments and retail space.
Corinthia agreed to lower buildings for tourism purposes. However, plans to take public land to take up apartments would remain the same.
"Our message is simple - we did not let you take the land December and we will never let you take this land away now," he said.
"Every negotiation Dr Mizzi did was structured around giving to the few," Dr Delia said. "He thinks that in this, the most corrupt country in Europe, he can benefit," he added.
'An illusion of surplus'
Dr Delia said recently published official figures also raised questions on where the surplus was. The government had ended last year in the red. When the Budget was presented, the government knew it would end up with a deficit, but the Prime Minister had insisted on a budget of "all tricks and no treats", he said.
In reaction to the Moneyval report, Dr Delia warned Malta could be blacklisted unless it addressed shortcomings immediately.
Malta’s anti-money laundering regime received a poor grade in a draft Moneyval evaluation, with the government now scrambling to push up its final score before the summer deadline.
"Following every report, we are finding ourselves without adequate explanation," Dr Delia said, adding this was embarassing.
He also referred to a report by Greco, the Council of Europe’s anti-corruption watchdog which had warned that Malta's criminal justice system was ‘at risk of paralysis’.
The situation, he said, was very grave and the government should immediately publish the report, not keep hiding it as it had done in the Egrant inquiry case.