Labour leader Joseph Muscat said this morning that the PL would be closely following a case, due to be presented in court next month, where a man would be accused of corrupt practices at the March 8 general election.

He said this was one of the cases mentioned in the past by the PL and involved an employer who allegedly demanded evidence from his employees over the way they had voted, or else they would be dismissed.

Dr Muscat said there were other cases which the PL felt should lead to court action.

OCCUPATIONAL ACCIDENTS

Speaking at Lija, Dr Muscat said it was unacceptable that two workers died at their place of work in a week. A worker died under tons of glass he was unloading from a fork-lifter on Tuesday, and a construction worker fell to his death in Rabat yesterday.

Dr Muscat demanded effective implementation of European health and safety laws in Malta.

Malta, he said, had many laws on paper, but they were not being implemented and the Occupational Health and Safety Authority (OHSA) was under-staffed.

Those two deaths, he said, should be a wake-up call. It needed to be ensured that the OHSA was given the tools with which to work. Employers needed to ensure that their employees were protected, and the workers themselves needed to take the precautions expected of them.

UTILITY BILLS

Dr Muscat, who was replying to questions by journalists, backed the unions’ call for people not to pay their utility bills in the first 45 days after they received them. Referring to the study made by auditors into the workings of the water and electricity bills, Dr Muscat observed that the auditors were saying that Enemalta inefficiencies cost €3 million. In previous reports that figure was €20 million. Who was coming out with these figures?

It was shocking, he said, that Enemalta did not even know how many electricity meters there were and the number was being ‘assumed’. So how could one believe how the bills were worked out?

Dr Muscat said the regulator should demand action from the government on the basis of promises made by Minister Austin Gatt himself that prices would go down when international oil prices fell.

He would not give a figure on the cost to Enemalta of reducing the bills to the level which the PL is demanding but insisted that reviewing the bill downwards would not entail any subsidies.

Dr Muscat said the PL would take an initiative in Parliament to ensure that the government accounted for its actions.