Joseph Muscat yesterday said a 58c cost-of-living-adjustment was not enough, as he addressed the widespread dissatisfaction with the news at a political activity.

The Prime Minister insisted the Budget would include measures to better compensate those most in need without tinkering with the formula used to calculate the yearly wage increase.

COLA is a legal mechanism that takes into consideration inflation when establishing the weekly rate by which wages should increase. The 58c is the lowest increase in many years after inflation dropped to record lows this year.

You will never find us justifying things that we used to criticise

Dr Muscat said it was the government’s “duty” to ensure people who needed a push, such as minimum-wage earners, pensioners, students and the middle class, were helped.

“It is clearly not enough... there are workers who wait for this increase and you will never find us justifying things that we used to criticise in the past,” Dr Muscat said, referring to the Labour Party’s past criticism of increases under Nationalist administrations.

Speaking to supporters at Żabbar, he explained the compensation was so low because of lower utility rates and stable fuel and gas prices.

Dr Muscat also spoke about last week’s controversy over a multi-million-euro solar panel contract awarded by the previous administration, which is being investigated by the police.

He mocked former PN environment minister George Pullicino – under whose watch the contract was awarded – calling him “Mastro Lindo” [a character used to market a washing liquid by the same name] with reference to Mr Pullicino’s parliamentary outburst that he was cleaner than all Labour MPs put together.

The government has refused to sign a power purchase agreement with the firm that won the PV tender, claiming that the feed-in tariff the previous administration settled for was much higher than the market price.

Last week in Parliament Energy Minister Konrad Mizzi revealed that at the tendering phase the winning company had submitted an unsigned letter from a Spanish bank as part of the required documentation.

The saga continued yesterday when Dr Muscat said the Maltese financial services regulator sought to verify with the Spanish bank Bankia whether the unsigned letter was authentic.

The bank replied that the lack of a signature made verification difficult but more importantly, if authentic, the letter could not have been issued on the letterhead Bancaja since this bank had already been transferred to Bankia on the day of the endorsement.

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