Gonzi tough with the weak

Incidentally, the cost to celebrate the opening of St George’s Square in Valletta some months ago was in the same region. So why be tough with children and young people with disabilities instead of cutting down on spending for parties and receptions?

The decision to give the NGO nearly a million euros to provide services to children and young persons with a disability was taken by the Prime Minister himself on the eve of the 2008 general election. During an election campaign, Gonzi goes all soft and starts promising everything to everyone. He starts writing letters guaranteeing jobs and a better income to thousands of employees.

But then once the election is over, Gonzi becomes tough and the same thousands of employees lose their jobs. It is really tough being a Prime Minister: you have to make “tough choices” especially after going all soft and generous in the process of becoming a Prime Minister.

The Ministry of Education has cut €180,000 from the budget of €980,000 allocated to Inspire in the government’s budget for 2008 and 2009. The total was agreed to by the Prime Minister himself on the eve of the 2008 general election.

The Education Ministry has tried to justify the €180,000 cut to Inspire by saying that it is not responsible to provide occupational therapy and physiotherapy to children with a disability. The Education Ministry says that these services should be provided by the Health Ministry. Health Minister Joseph Cassar forgot to make a request for such funds for these services in his submissions to the Finance Ministry for the government budget and so he has no funds to give Inspire for their programmes which he, as health minister, is failing to provide.

The Ministry of Education has also said that it cannot afford any longer to pay for courses for disabled youths over the age of 16. Parents of disabled children have responded by saying that their children should not be discriminated against as other young people without a disability are being offered free educational services at ITS, MCAST and the University of Malta. These parents also say that their children with a disability have a mental age of under 16 and the ministry should consider this.

In the meeting with the education and health ministers, the Prime Minister will no doubt be exploring to what extent government can fund the programmes for disabled children and young people provided by Inspire and other NGOs and which the government itself is not in a position to provide or which it can only provide at an increased cost of 30%.

The Prime Minister has said that the expenditure on these programmes has to be capped not to let the spending spiral out of control.

One cannot help noticing how tough the Prime Minister becomes when it is a question of controlling costs for services provided to people with disabilities. He is not so tough when it comes to controlling the costs of consultants paid €1,500 per week and similar costs.

Parents of disabled children and young people are asking why government wants to cap its expenditure on services for disabled persons but no capping is ever considered for controlling the number of students at ITS, MCAST and the University of Malta.

On 10 January 2012, I addressed a press conference about the National Curriculum Framework. This was a few days after government had said in a very vague message that to decrease the deficit it had to cut some of its spending in its Budget for 2012.

I asked: How are these cuts going to affect education? By how much is the education budget going to be cut and who is going to suffer as a result of these cuts?

The Education Ministry answered that same afternoon unequivocally: There will be no budget cuts in education.

The same message came from Finance Minister Tonio Fenech on 6 February.

Fenech said that there will be no cuts in education and the government was going to wait until June to implement €40 million in spending cuts anyhow, and will only go ahead with these cuts if targets to reduce the deficit by the middle of the year are not reached. He insisted that health, education and other essential services would not be chopped.

Two months later the truth is emerging thanks to parliamentary questions put forward by the Opposition.

The government has now admitted that it is reducing the budget allocated for education by more than €7.6 million.

This politics of deceit must be exposed.

The government has known all along that there will be cuts in the education budget for 2012, yet it refused to be honest and truthful. The public must be made  aware that Prime Minister Lawrence Gonzi’s government is constantly lying and shying away from public scrutiny.

Administrators in education are already being told to cut back their programmes in line with their reduced budget. June is only three months away and the cuts are already being enforced.

With all the talk of education being its top priority, the present administration is reducing its budget by €7.6 million in a year and as usual the worst hit will be the most vulnerable: children and young people.

Among the programmes affected by these cuts are programmes for children with dyslexia and other learning difficulties, children who struggle with literacy and children who lag behind in education. But what can one do? As Gonzi says when he is not out campaigning for votes: he has to make tough decisions.

Being tough with the weak and vulnerable is not a high risk as they will not organise protests, use the media to voice their opinions or bring down a government.

Evarist Bartolo is shadow minister for education.