Despite the government's Budget 2017 pledge to reduce social housing rents, tenants were still paying as much in rent as they were last year, Nationalist Party shadow minister Paula Mifsud Bonnici said today. 

Dr Mifsud Bonnici accused the government of making empty promises and leaving families who struggled to make ends meet high and dry. 

She said that the government had first raised social housing rents, only to change tack after PN leader Simon Busuttil had vowed to return rents to their 2013 level last September.

Dr Busuttil's promise had led Prime Minister Joseph Muscat to "panic" and shoehorn the same proposal into the government's 2017 budget, with the government also promising to refund tenants the difference in rent prices, the PN shadow minister said. 

But despite the Budget statements, tenants were still paying the same rent they had been paying last year, she said. 

PN spokesman Robert Cutajar noted that many of those bearing the brunt of higher rental costs were senior citizens who had to get by on their state pensions, while party spokesman Stephen Spiteri said that the government had yet to build any social housing units, four years into its legislature.