Labour leader Joseph Muscat this morning called for a public inquiry on the engagement of foreign nurses at Mater Dei and also urged the government to move legislation on assisted procreation.

Speaking on Mothers' Day, Dr Muscat said Malta needed a modern and serious law on assisted procreation. The compromise which had been reached when the issue was discussed by a parliamentary committee now needed to be built upon through legislation so that Malta no longer had a situation where people who could not afford private care were no longer denied the right to have children.

Dr Muscat said the government's family policy should not be about words but about creating jobs and easing burdens from families.

CALL FOR INQUIRY ON ENGAGEMENT OF NURSES

Dr Muscat said the claims being made about the engagement of nurses at Mater Dei Hospital merited an urgent public inquiry.

It was shameful, he said, that a substantial number of Pakistani nurses had been engaged through a contractor and they were being made to hand over a substantial part of their salary to the contractor, whose company was based in the Seychelles.

The government was claiming that it did not know anything about this. Yet t had now transpired that a public official even held some of the engagement interviews in the contractor's house.

Dr Muscat said it was also being suspected that somebody was pushing to have the foreign nurses engaged in preference to Maltese applicants - obviously so that the contractor would pocket more money.

Such allegations needed to be urgently investigated.

It was also shameful that casual social assistants engaged at the hospital were paid half that of the full timers.

In his address Dr Muscat said that Arms Ltd was again 'terrorising' families, giving deadlines for the payment of bills, some of which were doubtful.

He also referred to gaming shops and said that newly presented legislative amendments were so vague that one wondered whether this had happened on purpose to create problems of interpretation. For example, he said, Bingo Halls could become Poker Halls. Was this was the family policy was all about?

The Labour leader asked if local fuel prices would be reduced after international prices went down recently.

He also hit out at the latest increase in milk prices and said the inadequacy of the cost of living adjustment was being further underlined.

VAT 'AMNESTY' ON THE HORIZON

Dr Muscat said that while the government had trumpeted a narrowing of the deficit, it resulted that this had come about because of a delay in pension payments and because of a change in the administration of VAT. Therefore, the deficit had not really been reduced.

Furthermore, he said, another VAT amnesty was on the horizon so as to enable the government to say in the Budget speech that it was achieving its financial targets.

The Labour leader said the way the Valletta City Gate project was being handled was causing hardship to businesses.

And the government had still not set up the Fund it promised to pay for this project.