The Labour Party's Consumer Affairs spokesman, Michael Farrugia, said this morning that the Malta Competition and Consumer Affairs Authority was amateurish and unprofessional and it was only served as a screen for the government's failures.

Speaking at a press conference, he said a case in point was how the authority had taken years to produce a preliminary report on the sale of school uniforms, with no tangible result for consumers. School uniforms, Dr Farrugia said, were controlled by "a long-standing cartel". Students and their families were being made to suffer for the government's lack of urgency on the issue.

Another case concerned channels which were taken off pay TV schedules despite the existence of consumer contracts. It was unacceptable, Dr Farrugia said, that it took the authority eight months to conclude its investigations after the Comedy Channel and Living were pulled out of the schedules. The MCCA's report was "unprofessional" and didn't take the various packages and contracts offered by the television providers into account, Dr Farrugia said.

Consumers were being left exposed and unprotected.

Dr Farrugia also questioned goings-on at the MCCA appeals board. Since the MCCA's establishment, the appeals board still seemed to be inactive, despite there being a number of appeals waiting to be heard, he said.