Current Issues

At the moment there are several important and interesting issues in the public domain. I would like to comment upon four of them :

Animal welfare

Congratulations to the Animal Welfare Department for taking action to rescue a number of dogs kept in cruel conditions in a residence in Birkirkara. This is the type of action we citizens would really like to see more of. It should be the norm and not the exception. It is also high time that harsh penalties are imposed on those who harm animals. Only draconian examples will help towards restraining some brutes from treating lovable animals as if they were expendable creatures.

As the owner of a small dog, I find it incredible that there are still people who are insensitive to the beauty and affection of such creatures. We need to educate people that animals are a beautiful part of creation and worthy of our protection and care, certainly not of our contempt for their rights.

Public finance

The news that Eurostat statistics show that, in 2008, Malta registered the third-worst budget deficit in the eurozone is indeed worrying. We have now reached the figure of minus 4.7 % and with the International Monetary Fund warning of a deeper global recession ahead of us, the future for our country looks bleak. The Nationalist Government seems to be impotent when faced with this problem of ameliorating the country’s public finances.

This is highlighted by the fact that last year, debt levels also rose by a further two percentage points. We also learned that even the PN Government’s revised revenue targets for 2008 proved to be incorrect. Finance Minister Tonio Fenech’s statement that the Government is being less demanding in collecting payments so as not to disrupt the cash flow of companies is very preoccupying.

The Government is itself creating a situation where payments due to it continue to accumulate and this creates the danger that such payments may never eventually be paid in full by such companies if they go bankrupt. Such statements show the level of incompetence to which this PN Government has descended and the backfiring measures it is being forced to resort to because of the consequences of such incompetence

359 “Unknown Fathers”

It’s incredible that information given in Parliament shows that last year there were 359 births where the father was registered as “unknown”! It is obvious that abuse is rampant in this case and that some mothers are registering their child as having an “unknown father” in order to abuse from social benefits.

While it is true that in today’s society, casual sex is very common even among teenagers, I would still consider the figure given as being too high.

This is not an easy problem to solve as we have to be very careful that we do not discriminate against innocent babies who should not be held responsible for their parents’ irresponsible behaviour. We have to aim at safeguarding taxpayers’ money as well as providing social benefits for really deserving cases. The problem lies in identifying such cases because it is very difficult to distinguish between the real cases of need and the fake ones designed to abuse of social benefits.

Teachers

I will not enter into the details of the recent clash between the Malta Union of Teachers and the Government. However, I believe that there are certain basic facts that we all agree upon and on which any Agreement should be built.

Teachers are professionals and should be treated as such. It is unfair to treat them any differently from, say, doctors, although these and other professionals are worthy of the utmost respect from society. Furthermore, this implies that teachers should enjoy the privileges of their profession. Certain modes of control and scrutiny are alien to the idea and concept of a profession.

On the other hand, a profession entails that its members should behave, at all times and in all circumstances, in a professional manner. I am sure that with the right goodwill, problems between the MUT and the Government will be solved to everyone’s satisfaction. Education is too important for us to fall over such surmountable hurdles.