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If there is an instance where the Maltese saying ‘il-hmar il-maghkus idur ghalih d-dubbien’ really fits, it is where the honest citizen is involved. Honest citizens have always been in the bad books of any government and no government has ever rewarded them for being honest and loyal and punctual in paying their taxes and bills in time. On the contrary, they are constantly being penalised for the abuses made by others.
And this budget was no exception. After 17 years in power, the government has now admitted that the country is in dire straits and that it has a huge deficit problem. However, instead of addressing those who were responsible, in some way or another, for this problem, it has, once again turned to honest citizens to help him get out of the mess that it has created. There is no fault, in the eyes of this government, in the purchase of the RJ 70’s by Air Malta; there is no fault, in the eyes of this government, for the Lm45 million extra that the taxpayer has to pay for the Mater Dei hospital; for the Lm2million wasted in Posta limited; for the decision to spend Lm9million on Dar Malta in Brussels; for the ‘money no problem’ culture that it has been instilled throughout the years.
The fault lies with honest citizens. They are to blame for this mishap and they are the ones who should be penalised. If the prices of fuel has soared up, do not blame Josef Bonnici who arbitrarily decided to stop the hedging agreement, or the consumers who owe more than LM20 million to Enemalta in arrears. Neither should you blame the toothless administration of Enemalta who, up till some time ago, was not allowed to take drastic measures to recoup the arrears due lest the Government risked losing votes and was always reprimanding its former accountant Tarcisio Mifsud for doing so. No these people are not to blame and the punishment is to go to the honest citizens who pay their dues and are now being faced with a surcharge of 17 per cent on their bill.
I have stated for endless times that the government must put its house in order before it can embark on a campaign of taxes or surcharges. The government knows that it is owed more than Lm20 million from Enemalta, hundreds of millions in tax and national insurance contribution arrears and yet, instead of focusing its energy and attention on collecting these arrears, it is taking the road of least resistance and impose more taxes. Why the government does not have the courage to turn its attention to these people and collect what is due I do not know, but neither can I understand why John citizen is made to blame for the government’s incapacity to turn to the defaulters and press for a settlement.
In Malta the system works the other way round. You are not rewarded for being honest and for paying your taxes and bills in time; you are rewarded for flouting the system. Let me explain. If you want to pay Enemalta and ask for an updated bill, you are charged LM1 for taking an interest in the matter. If you pay your taxes, national insurance contributions and all bills in time, you get no reward for doing that. The reward goes to the defaulters, who are conceded either a cut off from the amount due or are given a repayment programme, all for interest free.
Actually, I will not be surprised if the Government goes for an amnesty for these defaulters. You will recall that there is a history in Malta of amnesties for the bad guys who evaded tax and duty. Who knows how many of us wanted to buy a television or a video recorder in the black market in the eighties and would not do it because of our loyalty to the laws of the country! But what happened? The amnesty was given to those who evaded the duty and made a fortune out of black market business and the honest citizen remained open-handed. Take the case of the abuse in kerosene. The government did not have the balls to turn to those who defaulted and surcharge them and instead he put the price up so that the housewife and the pensioner get the same punishment as those who have caused us this hardship.
This is not fair and the system has to change. Enough is enough and it is high time that we start getting some type of reward for being honest citizens. The government has to make an effort and concentrate for once, on the honest citizens. It must provide for them in the next budget. Honest citizens expect some kind of compensation for paying what is due to the government in time. They cannot continue to be put in the same weight as those who shun the system. The government must seriously consider some form of rebates for those who pay their dues in time. Otherwise it will be sending, once again, the same old message: beat me and I will reward you.
Because let us be honest, the system does not incite us to be law-abiding. On the contrary it is an incentive to abuse. If I pay the arrears in tax and national insurance contributions and my neighbour does not, it is I who is the worse one off and not him. I have less money in my pockets whereas he is investing his money elsewhere knowing that when the time comes he can always plead for a repayment programme or negotiate a set-off for paying the dues in one lump sum.
Take the case of the three scenarios presented in the budget for the pension reform: if we, as self-employed, are obliged to take a private insurance, what will happen to the national insurance contributions that we have paid to the government? Will they be transferred to the private insurance fund? This is something that hopefully will be taken up with the government and I urge you readers to make your submissions on this pension reform up till March of next year because it is something that is going to hit those of us who are in their mid-forties up to the very young. Actually, I cannot understand why the National Youth Commission and the youth organisations and student bodies are staying aloof when they the ones who will be mostly hit by this reform.
There are million ways on how the government can reduce the deficit in the next twelve months. Besides collection of arrears, I have already written about the millions of liri in the hands of the citizens who are willing to give them to the government (for a change) to redeem the ground-rents at the Joint Office but which they cannot do because the Joint Office is not property manned to deal with all the requests. What is the government waiting for? It has people who want to give him money and he is telling them to hold on and wait, giving the false impression to the citizens that the deficit problem is not a problem any more.
It will also be interesting to see how the issue of the reduction of four days vacation leave will evolve. Collective agreements are a contract and are binding between the employer and the employees and in the collective agreements the employer has bound himself to give the employees one day vacation leave for every public holiday that falls on a weekend. Now we have a situation where the employer has this obligation but at the same time the Government is now telling him that that obligation does not stand any more. What shall prevail? The collective agreement or the government policy which will soon become law? Unions are going in for tough negotiations and must ensure that the collective agreement prevails, as otherwise they might as well scrap them all.
The government has also shown in this budget that it does not know how to take the bull by the horns and be tough on the tough and this is further evidenced by the setting-up of more commissions and more advisory bodies who in the long run have nothing to do but to parrot what the government wants to listen. If the government wants to abolish or reduce the stipends to students it must say so and not set up a commission ‘to advise’ him when he already knows what it has to do in this regard.
Enough of these games please!
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