The Prime Minister is trying to solve the problem of growing unemployment by increasing jobs in the civil service, the Nationalist Party said.

It said in a statement that this was evident from recently published figures by the National Statistics Office on the gainfully employed.

These statistics showed that over a year, the number of people seeking employment had increased by eight per cent (541). This was at a time when 30 per cent (1,400) of new jobs were in the civil service.

The PN said that while in November there were 42,345 people in the civil service, in mid-2012, the last full year of the Nationalist government, there were 40,893.

Mario de Marco, Tonio Fenech and Stephen Spiteri said this made it evidently clear that not enough economic activity was being created, as could also be seen in import, export, industrial production and retail figures.