Neil Camilleri

Malta went from being the safest country in the European Union to a drug distribution centre, a place for prostitution and white slave traffic, PN leader Adrian Delia said this morning.

Speaking in Mosta, Delia blasted the government for largely ignoring crime in the budget. “There are only three lines in a three-hour speech.”

The PN leader referred to the recent drug busts and thanked the police officers involved, but noted that large quantities of drugs were passing through Malta.

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Delia said this should be a priority for the government. “The debate on drugs comes later. We will see then if drugs are a personal choice, if they are eroding our society or not.”

Delia will be giving his official reaction to the budget on Monday evening. He said it was also important to see how people were being affected by the budget.

“The government told us the budget was preparing the country for the future. Yes, many measures were announced, but none of them seem to be looking to the future. There are no long-term measures.”

Delia said the government had no plans for education - the foundation for tomorrow’s citizens. “They told us they will be building the three schools they said they were going to build in the last budget. That is what we are being told about education.”

Teachers are telling a different story, he said. “They are speaking of an unprecedented crisis. Before the teachers’ shortage the government is arrogantly trying to give the impression that it is listening to the teachers when in reality it even fails to treat them with dignity.”

Turning to transport, “the country’s biggest wound,” Delia said people were not interested in numbers and figures, or in what past administrations did. “What they are interested about is the time it will take them to get to where they need to go. The government is not talking about this problem. There is nothing for the future when it comes to transport. If before it took you one and a half hours to get there, it will still take the same amount of time now.”

Delia reiterated the PN’s willingness to help the government. “Let us sit down together, acknowledge first that there is a problem and then tackle it.”

The PN leader also spoke about pensions, noting that many thousands were reaching retirement age every year. “The government looks at numbers, not people. It is not giving people peace of mind about their future,” insisting that the announced €2 weekly increase was not enough.

“The government is telling people aged 55 and upwards: ‘I cannot help you. Go and sell your homes.’ In the midst of a surplus Labour is telling you to sell of your property. This is shameful. This lack of panning will undermine society.”

He also insisted that the PN was not refusing to sit on the waste committee, as the government was putting it. “What we do not want is to have a token seat on the committee where all the decisions would have already been taken. The PL government has refused to speak about this problem, which has been getting worse and worse. Now they want us on the committee to be part of the problem and get the blame when they tell people there is no solution. We want to be part of a committee where our voice would be a strong one – a voice that is heard – because our voice will be your voice, he told supporters.”