The south of the island will be benefiting from a major educational project and an environmental one, creating jobs and economic growth, Prime Minister Joseph Muscat said this morning.

Speaking in Zejtun on the occasion of Worker's Day, he said the south could not continue to be left out of the country’s economic growth and it was not right that the only development in the south was of polluting industries.

So when a major educational project was being considered, the government asked the investors to consider the south.

Dr Muscat did not give any more details about the project but TVM earlier this week said that an American University was being developed in the south by the private sector.

The second project was intended to protect the environmental lungs of the area and the government would be embarking on a process to open a natural national park in the south.

He said that all rules would be followed and the necessary consultation would be undertaken. However, he did not elaborate.

Earlier, Dr Muscat spoke about job creation noting that the government had transformed a stagnating economy to one that was creating jobs.

In just two years, he said, the unemployment rate had been brought down to the lowest ever since statistics started being kept and the number of jobs created in two years equalled those created in the last five years of the previous administration.

The government, he said, would continue working as there were still people who were unemployed, who lost their job, who had a precarious job or who did not earn enough for a decent living.

He noted that when a company had to terminate the jobs of 70 of its employees in the past days, the government immediately started working a good number of those workers already had another job. The government was to continue working so that who had not yet found a placement would do so soon.

He thanked the Employment and Training Corporation and employers who, without being asked, offered to take on some of these workers.

This, he said, would not have been possible without economic growth.

Dr Muscat also spoke on the decisions taken including that to stop social benefits to people on the employment register and the enforcement of the law provision that employers had to employ a number of people with a disability.

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