Prime Minister Joseph Muscat on Thursday urged local councils to clean up the country and reduce waste, admitting he was not satisfied with the level of cleanliness in the country.

Speaking at Msida during the Labour party annual general conference, Dr Muscat said people needed to show discipline not to leave waste in the streets.

People needed to show the same care to the streets as they did to the inside of their houses. 

The big challenge in the next five years was for local councils to improve the level of cleanliness, he said.

There were several reasons for the waste in the streets: contractors that didn't pick up waste and tourism pressures being among them, he said. 

With hard work, he hoped the Msida promenade could one day be as beautiful as the Sliema one. 

Communities, he added, were hoping for their roads to be improved, for better parking, and to deal with tensions between the residential community and budding businesses. 

The Labour party would be issuing a manifesto for each locality addressing these issues. "No issue is too small," he said. 

He once again levelled criticism at the Opposition for not fielding enough local council candidates in 21 localities. "Isn't the scope of a political party to subject itself to people's judgement," he said.

Addressing injustices

Work-related injustices were also being addressed as part of an electoral pledge.

Some 6,000 people will be receiving over €11 million this year in a bid to deal with long-standing grievances. Some 2,500 police officers who were not paid overtime will also be seeing that injustice addressed, Dr Muscat said. 

The payments were only possible because the government had registered a surplus, he said. This allowed the government to correct injustices that had been made in the past, he said. 

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