Mid-week public holidays should be transferred to weekends, says AD

Arnold Cassola, chairperson of Alternattiva Demokratika, has proposed that public holidays which fall on a weekday be moved to Fridays or Mondays, thereby resulting in a long weekend and an opportunity for Maltese to travel to Gozo.

Describing the recent government initiative, which allowed Maltese to travel up to Gozo at half the usual price of the Gozo ferry ticket during the weekend of Valentine's, as an "excellent stimulant for the Gozitan economy", Cassola said that more people would travel to the sister island if such a scheme was introduced.

"These new long weekends would not only give the Maltese more chances of visiting Gozo but would serve as a short shut-down period for factories in Malta, when machinery could be serviced" he said.

Meanwhile, AD's deputy chairman said that the government should consider not subsidising the price of car tickets - in order to ease the pressure of added traffic and pollution in Gozo - but should instead subsidise a free bus transport weekend ticket, which would be valid on Friday afternoons and in Gozo for the rest of the weekend.

He said that passenger tickets should continue to be subsidised, and suggested that buses in Gozo could run on a 24-hour basis during the weekends.