Recently, the leader of the Opposition made two very serious allegations. He said a single mother with three children, one of whom suffers from autism, had her social service benefits reduced from €600 to €370.

The minister responsible for social services immediately wrote to Simon Busuttil asking him for details so he would take immediate action if any mistake or wrong decision had been made. The minister was left without any reply. The second allegation concerned an ETC employee.

Busuttil said the employee had told him that although he deserved a promotion someone had informed him that he first had to become a member of the Labour Party.

The ETC executive chairman immediately wrote to Busuttil asking for more the information so he would investigate since it was a very serious allegation.

Again, Busuttil failed to reply. My logical conclusion is that either Busuttil invented both stories or else the two people who contacted him had invented the stories themselves knowing that Busuttil will repeat them without checking their veracity.

Surely, if Busuttil had indeed received the two phone calls he should have felt the need to help the single mother and the ETC employee by asking for their personal details so he would take the matter up with the ministers concerned. Or, at least, table a question in Parliament to the ministers concerned. Instead, Busuttil chose to speak about it in his public speeches.

But his failure to even reply to the letters sent to him by the ETC chairman and the minister casts serious doubts on the veracity of the two allegations made by the leader of the Opposition, who seems to be more interested in trying to win some cheap political points then helping two individuals who contacted him.

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