The cost of government is shooting due to the added expenditure on the public sector wage bill, as is the national debt which is set to increase by over €700 million between 2013 and 2015, shadow ministers Mario de Marco and Therese Comodini Cachia said.
In a statement, they said that the €126 million increase in the public sector wage bill over the past two years was the direct result of the government's short-sighted strategy of combating unemployment by placing people on the public sector payroll.
The government’s excessive recruitment drive started when, earlier on in this legislature, unemployment started edging upwards and nearly reached 8,000. Faced with this problem, the government resorted to public sector recruitment.
In 2012, the number of people employed in the public sector stood at 40,813.
They said that the number of people employed in the public sector, according to the latest available statistics was 44,551, an increase of more than 3,600 persons.
Over a two-year period, 3,000 people retired or resigned from the public service. This was by the government’s own estimate and meant that over the past two years, government employed close to 6,600 persons.
The shadow ministers said that contrary to the impression being given by government, public sector employment was not being restricted to the education and health sectors. It was also spread to the Water Services Corporation and positions of trust created by ministers.
They said that the government's claim that reversed an unemployment trend inherited from the previous administration was false.
“Even during the worst economic recession in living memory, our country managed to maintain low levels of unemployment because of the timely measures taken by the PN administration.
“These measures were recognised by the European Union as being crucial to saving jobs and helping Malta weather the storm. Government should focus its attention to those areas of the economy which are losing their competitive edge rather than on re-writing Malta's economic history,” they said.