PN leader: New jobs created, but not enough

Government is not doing enough to create new jobs, opposition leader Simon Busuttil told MCESD members today.

During a meeting held with civil society representatives sitting on the council for economic and social development, Busuttil underlined the PN’s “concerns” over government’s efforts to address unemployment.

Resonating the PN’s slogan for the forthcoming European elections, ‘Malta Ahjar’ (A better Malta), Busuttil insisted that job creation was the “key” to a “better Malta.”

Busuttil, accompanied by secretary-general Chris Said and a number of candidates, including MEP David Casa, Therese Comodini Cachia, Helga Ellul and Norman Vella, pointed out that the opposition’s call for a clear strategic plan on job creation had so far been unanswered by government.

“We rejoice when the government introduces measures which create new jobs. We acknowledge that over the past year jobs have been created, bust statistics released by the National Statistics Office show that not enough jobs have been created with unemployment growing month after month,” the PN leader said.

Warning that government is ignoring unemployment at its own peril, Busuttil noted that unemployment was edging closer towards the 8,000 mark and up to 22% have been out of employment for a year or more.

Explaining that statistics were showing that the problem was “of a structural nature rather than a provisional one,” Busuttil said that this contrasted with the trend on a European level, where countries such as Spain and Portugal - which were among the worst hit following the 2007 recession - are registering a drop in the unemployment numbers.

Youth unemployment, Busuttil added, is the most worrying aspect, with the numbers of young people out of employment, training or study swelled up to 5,800.

While acknowledging the validity and the need of the EU-wide Youth Guarantee programme, Busuttil said government had not fulfilled the expectations it built prior to the 2013 election and had only launched a “private lessons scheme” for a limited number of young persons.

Turning to the deficit, which government yesterday said was now under the 3% threshold, Busuttil said that their was a discrepancy between the €200 million deficit and the €372 million increase in the national debt.