The country's economy might be doing well on paper, but citizens were not reaping the fruits of this economic success, Opposition leader Adrian Delia charged on Sunday.
In an interview aired on the Nationalist Party’s Net FM, Dr Delia said last Monday’s Budget was "no Budget at all".
“There was no mention in Monday’s speech, about where the country is headed, about what the plans for the future are and what direction we want to move towards,” Dr Delia said.
The PN leader said it was not enough for the country to be doing well in economic indicators – tackling the deficit was all well and good, he said, but how was this impacting people’s lives?
There were two main ways to generate growth - the way the PN had done this was by creating new high-value sectors in the economy. This meant that the value added to the economy would make its way to people’s pockets.
The government’s current approach of importing cheap labour, however, meant that the increase in economic output was not the result of more value added, but just an increase in production.
There was no trickle down of this economic wealth, and so people’s lives were not improving.
Worse still, Dr Delia said that as thousands more workers flooded the island, problems of congestion, poor environment, and overstretched public resources, were negatively impacting Maltese families.
Read: Migrant workers’ policy fuelling poverty - Delia
The Opposition leader said this was happening at the same time as the cost of living was growing at a faster rate than the allowances the government was giving out as compensation.
The government had given families €2.33 to make up for rising costs, but food had increased by four per cent alone.
“This increase [in the Cost Of Living Allowance] doesn’t even cover the rise in food costs. We know that food costs impact lower earning families the most – we have a socialist government without a social soul,” he said.
Earlier in his speech, Dr Delia hit out at a few sections from Monday’s Budget speech, such as the lack of investment in social housing. He promised that a future PN-led government would ensure every Maltese had a roof over their heads and could live with dignity.
On education, Dr Delia said the government had not mentioned how it was failing to build a new school every year, and how it would steamroll over teachers’ unions.
The government, he said, had all but forgotten agriculture, and was not investing in the Maltese product. It had also cut investment in sport, and seemed to lack a plan on civic law and order.