Opposition spokesman on generational solidarity Anthony Agius Decelis said yesterday that the 2010 Budget was not helping to reduce the number of people living in the risk of poverty.

He said the PL had always been a pioneer in the fight against poverty, which could yet raise its head again and throw people into great hardships. Up to 20 per cent of Maltese senior citizens were living in the risk of poverty. The EU had calculated there were 80 million of its citizens living at such risk in Europe, including Malta.

Prominent sociologists Fr Charles Tabone and Angela Abela had recently found that 16 per cent of Maltese were living at the risk of poverty. This was shocking and constituted a red light on serious problems.

Everyone must work to reduce this risk, but the Budget for 2010 was not helping much. He believed everybody had a role to help move Malta forward, but now was not the time to put new burdens on SMEs.

Last year Malta had lost 200 small businesses, but the government had shown no interest and had commissioned no study of the problem.

Mr Decelis said he had been disappointed to hear minister Austin Gatt allege that the opposition did not want SmartCity to succeed. But how many times had he asked for the opposition's help? When had the opposition shown that it rejoiced in unemployment?

The Budget lacked substance to make particular schemes better known. Even such advertising needed funds. The ETC had a very good scheme to help former convicts to reintegrate themselves in the workforce, but it must be made better known. The corporation could enlist the help of PBS and the Education Channel to this end.

The opposition believed that anybody who erred must be made aware of their rights and given a second chance. Mr Decelis said a man jailed for six months for a crime committed 10 years before had been promised his job back by his employer, but the promise had been forgotten. This effectively meant that the man and his family had been condemned forever.

Things should be done better and more sensitively. A man who had gone through the trauma of losing his wife to breast cancer 21 years ago had recently received an invitation for his wife to go for breast screening. Somebody must be held accountable for such gaffes which reopened old wounds.

Mr Decelis said no less than 111 medicines had been out of stock over the past three years. The government should launch a serious investigation on why this had happened, when the same medicines had been available in pharmacies against payment.