The Opposition will file a parliamentary motion in an attempt to stop the Education Minister from being able to get students’ personal information for research purposes.
Nationalist Party leader Simon Busuttil made the announcement during a political activity in Paola yesterday.
He questioned the motives behind Legal Notice 76 of 2014, which will apply from pre-primary level to University, and said that a motion to repeal it would be filed this evening.
Dr Busuttil asked whether the government wanted to play Big Brother and spy on others by seeking access to personal details.
In his address, he accused the government of embarking on the privatisation of Enemalta, contrary to Labour’s pre-election pledges. To add insult to injury, he said, Enemalta workers were being invited to start working for a Chinese company or suffer a reduction of their employment conditions. Dr Busuttil said this was a blatant example of how the government had betrayed the people’s trust.
He lashed out at the government for lack of consultation over major decisions, citing the citizenship scheme and the LNG tanker in Marsaxlokk as examples.
Referring to government plans to introduce ‘banding’ in schools, he said there had been no consultation on this form of streaming.
Does the government want to play Big Brother and spy on others by requesting access to personal details?
The planning authority’s’ decision to grant Malta Freeport a one-year permit to repair oil rigs was “disgraceful”, Dr Busuttil said, adding that the Prime Minister was not credible in saying that the government would appeal the decision. Had Joseph Muscat really been against the permit, he could have written to the planning authority board, as he had done about the gas tanker, he said.
Dr Busuttil said the PN was willing to discuss past mistakes in its quest to regain the people’s confidence. He welcomed the setting up of the equal opportunities movement within the party and said more internal structures were in the pipeline.
Next month’s European Parliament elections would be very tough for the PN in view of the heavy defeat it suffered at the polls last year.
While acknowledging that the party would take time to recover, he expressed confidence that progress was being registered because the Opposition was adopting an honest, humble and responsible approach.
In a statement, Labour said Dr Busuttil failed to explain why a PN government had exempted the Freeport from paying €800,000 in compensation to the Birżebbuġa community when it was granted permission to extend the facility.
Labour’s representative on the Mepa board had voted against the Freeport permit.
The party said Dr Busuttil had no credentials to portray himself as the defender of citizens in the south, who had been treated by successive PN administrations as second-class people.