Updated 1.53 p.m.

Claudio Grech, chairman of Mita, the government's IT agency, has denied conflict of interest in his role as head of the agency and his involvement in the Nationalist Party.

Opposition leader Joseph Muscat this morning called on Mr Grech to consider his position. He said it was worrying that Mr Grech had, at the election, handled the PN computers, and he also had full access to the government's data.

Mr Grech in a statement, said he never allowed his duties as director/chairman of Mita to interfere in his other activities.

He had always carried out his public duties in the interests of the nation, and the results were evident.

Dr Muscat was fundamentally wrong when he said that he had access to all the government's information, Mr Grech said, He was also showing that he did not know how Mita and government systems worked.

His role and that of the Mita board was to draw up policies. Access to the IT systems was restricted solely to those who had a technical need for it. The board members, including himself, had no technical need for the information on the government systems, and therefore they had no need for access, Mr Grech said.

"Dr Muscat should know that the time when information could be accessed and could be manipulated by those who did not need it, is past," Mr Grech said.

Speaking at a political conference, Dr Muscat said it was worrying that Mr Grech had, at the election, handled the PN computers, and he also had full access to the government's data.

It needed to be ensured that no political party could abuse of an individual's personal data held by the state, Dr Muscat said. Mr Grech should resign from Mita because this sort of conflict was no longer acceptable.

GOVERNMENT 'LACKING DIRECTION'

Earlier in his address, Dr Muscat said Malta needed a united, focused government that knew where it was going.

What Malta had instead, was a government which had lost the plot and was more taken up with hiding its own divisions.

Dr Muscat said this was a government which could not even decide whether buses should use Bisazza Street, a government which imported green tarmac which turned black in a month-and-a-half, a government which billed Mepa clients for printing service and a governemnt, which a year after the promises, had still not opened satellite offices for Arms Ltd, or solved the problems there.

This was a government which, for years, ignored advice about the need for legal counsel for people under interrogation. It then enacted but did not enforce the relevant law, and now criminals might well walk free.

This was a government which had messed up the bus service. But all this was just symptomatic of the administration as a whole.

COMPENSATION

Dr Muscat said the compensation to low-income households for the higher fuel costs, announced by the government on Friday, was far too low and the eligibility criteria were too narrow. The needs of 110,000 households in the middle class had been ignored by the government. These were the households who consistently paid more taxes but were then made ineligible for new benefits while they faced higher costs for education and health and worried about their pension.

Dr Muscat contrasted the compensation to the pay rise which ministers had given themselves. One would expect, he said, that the government would come up with a sweetener as the election approached, but the people would not forget what happened over five years including higher costs for water, power, fuel, bread and milk.

Wages in Malta were falling in real terms as inflation grew faster, Dr Muscat said.

Dr Muscat urged the Prime Minister to come clean on the government's plans on the retirement age. EU documents clearly showed Malta's agreement for plans in this direction.

The prime minister argued that doing nothing would render the pensions system unsustainable. But wasn't this an admission of government failure?

Labour did agree that something should be done and had issued its plan, based on having, for example, more women in the working population and longer maternity leave.

It was amazing, Dr Muscat said, that Mater Dei, one of Malta's biggest cost centres, engaged a financial controller just a few months ago. Or that Malta paid the contractors for the building of a cancer wing as part of Mster Dei, but this never came about.

Turning to the comments in The Sunday Times by Joseph Carauana, the CEO of Mater Dei, that free healthcare is 'unsustainable' Dr Muscat said the government had a problem if the CEO did not share its vision on free healthcare.

Ir however, as he suspected, the two actually shared the same vision, then one could expect costs to creep in after the election.

The PL was giving an assurance that medical services would remain free, and its focus would be on a better service, Dr Muscat said.

MARSA POWER STATION

Dr Muscat said the government had long not been keeping its word on closing the Marsa power station. It had not even not kept its word with the EU. The time limit of 20,000 operational hours given by the EU for the power station was being exceeded. The government had wasted 33 months in getting new generating plants on stream. The 33 months were wasted as the government changed the law to made BWSC eligible for the contract.

It was useless blaming the PL for the delay. The process continued unabated when the PL complained about BWSC.

He hoped that the people would not now have to be burdened with EU penalties for what were clearly government failures, Dr Muscat said.

Dr Muscat said he was 'disgusted' how some people within the PN had used personal details to denigrate some people, and he wanted to express his solidarity with Cyrus Engerer. The PL refrained from this sort of thing, even when he learnt of an admission in a criminal case. What was happening, he said, was symptomatic of victimisation against those who disagreed with the government. Freedom of association and expression needed to be guaranteed to everyone.

The PL made mistakes in the past, and paid for them. Now it needed to make sure that those mistakes were not repeated, and worse, even if in a more subtle way, by other people.

The PL yearned for an open, truly European country, Dr Muscat said.

The situation had developed from a phone call to the Police Commissioner, which should never have been done, to an allegation that Edgar Galea Curmi, the Prime Minister's chief of staff, called at the residence of journalist Saviour Balzan to hand over information which only the police had, regarding legal proceedings against Harry Vassallo. He hoped, Dr Muscat said, that the commissioner would hold a press conference on this, more so as Mr Balzan was also claiming that he had also been offered information on a person's mental health.

GOVERNMENT DENIAL

In a statement, the government denied that contractors had been paid to build a cancer wing at Mater Di Hospital.