(Adds Ministry statement)

The IT minister is holding the Prime Minister hostage keeping him from speaking out about the situation at Smart City, Labour leader Joseph Muscat said this morning.

Speaking in Mgarr, Dr Muscat noted that on the eve of the last election, young people were promised that more than 5,000 jobs would be created through Smart City. However, this was not the case and it had been claimed this was because someone had not applied for the pumping station to be dismantled.

Dr Muscat said he doubted whether this was the real reason but he could not understand how the Prime Minister had not yet said anything about the situation, especially following a declaration by the minister that because of what had happened Smart City was no longer bound to create any jobs.

Dr Muscat spoke on the sixth change to the public transport system announced this week noting that the part of the reform which had been giving the country less polluting buses was now also disintegrating. These were bad decisions the people were having to pay for.

The Labour leader said that 65,000 complaints about the new service were made in the first two months and six changes which had not led anywhere were implemented.

Faced with such a situation, the Labour opposition had moved a motion of no confidence in the Transport Minister and the party will on Friday be voting in favour of this motion.

Decency would have required the government to reclaim the €400,000 it had spent on consultancy. But the government was not interested in doing so.

The Labour leader said that should his party be elected to government, it would work to remove bureaucracy and would judge ideas not according to how good, beneficial and job creating they were.

The PL was a pro-business party because for the creation of employment there had to be a partnership between the government and the private sector.

But contrary to the Nationalist Party, it would discuss, decide and implement.

Dr Muscat said the PL felt what families were going through. The people felt they had come to a point where they could not afford to give their families the standard of living they deserved.

Rather than progressing, families were struggling not to fall behind. Labour's solution was realistic, sustainable and can be implemented and it would be implementing its promises 100 per cent.

The Labour leader spoke on the recent analysis of the financial situation on the island by three credit rating agencies. He said that although the agencies came to different conclusions, all said that government debt had grown in an unplanned, unprogrammed and disproportionate manner.

Malta, Dr Muscat said, was having to pay €550,000 daily as interest on its debt. The country needed a clear plan of how to control and reduce debt, which had gone out of control under this Prime Minister, who was not technically and politically competent to manage country's economy.

Additional buses meet environmental standards - ministry

In a reply the IT and Transport ministry said that it was easy to watch and criticise but criticism should make sense and be consistent.

The ministry said that the additional buses being brought to Malta were used in other European states and were in line with European environmental norms.

They were being used temporarily to mitigate the current situation and serve the public

By May the additional buses will be in line with the rest of the fleet.

On Smart City, the ministry said that the PL was now trying to make this project its own and promised to implement it should it be elected to government.