Opposition wants to summon citizenship monitoring committee

The Opposition plans on requesting a meeting of the citizenship monitoring committee after its leader Simon Busuttil publicly challenged the government to summon this committee.

Raising questions in parliament on how much money Identity Malta had spent on advertising the Individual Investor Programme with newspapers, Nationalist MP Jason Azzopardi went on to ask Home Affairs Minister Manuel Mallia whether the government would be summoning the monitoring committee.

“There are no plans as yet for the monitoring committee to meet,” Mallia replied.

Asked whether he could give an approximate figure on how many applications for Maltese citizenship were upheld, the minister went on to request Azzopardi to table a written question.

In reply to a supplementary question on whether the citizenship monitoring committee would be meeting following Busuttil’s public call, Mallia said he had not received any formal requests by the PN leader.

“The leader of the Opposition is a member of this same committee. Similarly to how he had requested a meeting of the Security Service committee, Busuttil knows what he has to do if he wants this committee to meet,” Mallia replied.

He however would not confirm whether the committee would meet if Busuttil were to send a formal request to the minister.

“We’ll cross that bridge when we come to it,” Mallia told Azzopardi.