Coleiro-Preca: government relies on official stats but ignores tourism stakeholders

“The Nationalist Party is completely ignoring the problems that the tourism industry and does not want to listen to anybody,” she insisted.

Coleiro-Preca explained that it was “disappointing” that the Government did not even bother to analyse the indications that came out of the latest MHRA survey for the first quarter of 2010.

She explained that despite the fact that the number of tourists had increased, the bed-nights had increased and their expenditure had also increased, the gross operating profit for the first quarter of 2010 had remained “much less than that registered during 2009, which was a crisis year”.

The increase in the price of gas, Coleiro-Preca insisted, would give “a harder blow” to restaurant operators to cope with the increasing expenditure.

She also accused the PN Government of “ignoring” thousands of workers who worked in this sector. “It looks like the Government has not learnt anything from what the ETC had indicated in its annual report that there had been a reduction of employment in this sector of 4.1% during 2009”.

Moreover, Coleiro-Preca highlighted the fact that according to the same annual report, the higher amount of abuses that were committed in the working sector during 2009 was made in the tourism industry.

The Nationalist Government had been “irresponsible” when it liberalised the gas sector without ensuring that the increases that there had been and which potentially there could be did not lead to a further burden on industry and family,” the Labour’s main spokesperson on tourism insisted.

She also accused the Nationalist Government of being “irresponsible” when it announced this gas increase in the tourism peak season, when hoteliers and restaurateurs already had an agreement on room rates with tour operators.