Opposition leader Bernard Grech on Thursday appealed for a collective effort to save Air Malta and safeguard its workers during a meeting with unions representing the airline’s employees.

His meeting with the unions following a government announcement last week that it would be halving the airline’s workforce from 890 to 420 in a last-ditch attempt to save the airline.

“We have to see how to proceed. Let us work together so as not to lose Air Malta. The Nationalist Party has the political commitment to ensure the airline is not lost as this would be detrimental to the country, workers and the economy,” Grech said.

He continued that “we have the duty to listen and see what the difficulties are to find solutions”.

The Nationalist government, he said, had had a plan for Air Malta but this was abandoned by the Labour government.

The PN now wanted to look at that plan and see how, in current realities, it could provide a real alternative for workers and their families to have their mind at rest that there was a future for them.

The situation, he said, had to be solved as soon as possible.

Air Malta could not be lost because it was important for the country and indispensable on several levels of the economy.

During the meeting, Grech was accompanied by deputy leader Robert Arrigo, finance spokesman Mario de Marco, political renewal spokesman Claudio Grech and candidates Ivan Castillo and John Baptist Camilleri.