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News •
March 14 2004 |
The loss of more than three million above what was projected for the first two months at the dockyards - after a staggering Lm300 million were written off - and the decision to back track on the smoking ban send the first wrong messages from government. MaltaToday is informed the government retreat on the smoking ban was taken unilaterally by Louis Deguara.
The change to the smoking ban comes as a pleasant surprise to the GRTU but sent the wrong message to other stakeholders including the unions who are reading that with the right kind of arm twisting the government’s resolve can easily be tested.
The losses at the dockyard contribute in no small way to changing the image portrayed by the Gonzi leadership campaign team, where the reforms he captained at the dockyard were described as a success story.
The revelations at the dockyard and the smoking ban retreat come at a time when European parliament faithful John Attard Montalto called for a government of national unity.
Dr Attard Montalto said this when he was talking at a business breakfast organised by sister newspaper The Malta Financial & Business Times. He said this country needed to take hard decisions and said the time was ripe for a national government.
During the business breakfast other speakers lamented about the need to be competitive and for Malta Enterprise to be more enterprising. A comment which led some representatives from Malta Enterprise to comment that even their overrated Lm60,000 a year rent for the six year head office owned by Malta’s ambassador to the Netherlands and sited next to a car scrap yard in Santa Venera was hardly the best way to introduce an foreign investor to Malta.
Speaking in the presence of invited journalist Herman Grech on RTK, Dr Gonzi revealed that his decision thinking process would very much be determined by the conclusions of ‘experts.’ |
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