Prime Minister Joseph Muscat stressed this morning that Malta’s presidency of the EU council will not distract the government from the everyday needs of the Maltese people.

“We will preside the EU Council but we will also continue to run the country and continue to achieve success,” Dr Muscat said in a brief One Radio interview.

He said an example of one of the government’s successes was job creation. Figures issued last week, he said, showed how the government in three years created twice as many jobs as the former government in five years.

This happened while taxes were reduced, electricity tariffs went down, there was stability in fuel prices and the power station was being converted to gas. Malta was also achieving records in tourism.

This, Dr Muscat said, was a government of change which challenged the status quo.  

He said matters which affected people’s everyday life included the way how the government was currently introducing new benefits for people with diabetes and reducing prices for 29 medicines.

Dr Muscat said oil prices were currently surging because Opec countries had decided to reduce production. Had the PN’s policies been in force, electricity and gas tariffs would have been raised and people would not have afforded to heat their homes.  

The government was aware that the 4c fuel price increase hurt people, but the increase  was the lowest in Europe, he said.

He pointed out that this week a raft of benefit increases was coming into force including higher salaries through the Cola increase, higher social benefits and higher stipends and pensions as announced in the Budget.

This government was not perfect, he said, but was man enough to admit and correct its mistakes. In contrast the former government never admitted its mistakes and acted like it was perfect, a situation which was persisting in Opposition.

A case in point was how former minister Jason Azzopardi was not admitting anything over the way land was transferred in Qormi with considerable loss of revenue for the government.  

The opposition, he said, was persisting in error.