(Adds PL statement)
The Nationalist Party today asked the government to take various measures to increase the 58c a week cost of living adjustment it was proposing for next year.
Addressing a press conference in front of the Office of the Prime Minister, PN finance spokesman Tonio Fenech said that in 2010, when the government’s cost of living adjustment amounted to €1.16 a week, Labour had organised a protest in Valletta to complain and condemn the government.
He said that using Dr Muscat’s yardstick, the Prime Minister should now introduce measures, such as tax credits and extra compensation, to ensure that people, particularly those on the poverty line, were adequately compensated.
“Dr Muscat said in 2010 that the €1.16 increase was a joke and that he would have introduced other incentives. We expect more than 58c now that he is Prime Minister,” Mr Fenech said.
The PN spokesman said that the average COLA adjustment during the previous PN administration amounted to €3.84 a week or €200 a year.
He said that this year, Dr Muscat will be giving families just €30 a year saving some €40 million in expenditure.
He said that while the government had been boasting that it reduced electricity tariffs by €30 million, it was now taking €40 million from people’s pockets.
Mr Fenech asked why the €1.16 originally approved for this year had suddenly become 58c. He asked whether this was the first action taken on the letter from the European Commission calling on the government to revisit the Budget.
In a reply, the Labour Party said that the PN’s statements on COLA adjustments between 2008 and 2013 were confirmation of the increase in the cost of living under the previous administration.
The present government started to mitigate this increase with the reduction in water and electricity rates, stability in fuel prices, reduction in income tax, free childcare, car registration tax refunds and stipend increases, among others, bringing inflation to the lowest rate it had ever been in the past 30 years.
The Labour government, it said, was to continue to understand and address the reality of families who were still feeling the pressure of prices through measures that would continue to create incentives for economic growth.
It said it was ironic that Mr Fenech was calling for a reduction in income tax when he had not kept his word to reduce income tax and was now, together with his leader, proposing an increase in the national insurance of workers and employers.