Prime Minister should shoulder responsibility for his actions - PN

The Prime Minister should walk the talk and shoulder political responsibility for his actions and those of the people he selected as ministers and parliamentary secretaries, shadow minister Roberta Metsola said today.

Addressing a news conference on the Auditor General’s report for 2014, which, she said, highlighted major shortcomings by the government in the use of public funds, Dr Metsola said the Muscat government was not a serious one and used the people’s tax money badly.

Shadow Minister Marthese Portelli, who also addressed the conference, said that a number of shortcomings noted by the Auditor General were in relation to Energy Minister Konrad Mizzi who paid a lawyer a total of €260,494 in just one year at a rate of €156 an hour. This was 40 times over the minimum wage and the contract was given by direct order, against regulations.

In another instance, a direct order for legal services at the rate of between €235 and €900 an hour was also given. In both instances, the Auditor General criticised the government for breaching Public Procurement Regulations.

The Auditor General, she said, also noted that the expenses of a contractor who worked on a conference organised in July 2014 reached €12,200, even though the estimate given was of just over €3,000.

She also referred to five trips out of Europe, two of them to China, which cost the Maltese tax payer €29,000. The Auditor General remarked that there was no information about these trips, she noted.