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Karl Schembri
Alternattiva Demokratika has only collected one-third of the signatures needed to call for a referendum on rent laws, a week since its self-imposed deadline to get 30,000 names backing its proposal.
“We’ve lagged behind because an information leaflet explaining our position, which we were planning to send to every household, was only produced now,” AD Chairperson Harry Vassallo said. “But the momentum is increasing and now we have a better leaflet, which should be in every house in two weeks’ time.”
The AD chairman had declared on TV programme Int x’Tahseb? in June that his party would collect 30,000 signatures by the end of last month.
“This is only the first phase,” Vassallo said last Thursday. “After we collect all the signatures we’ll be publishing a Green Paper (a discussion document), and we intend to get it published before the government.”
Minister for the Family and Social Solidarity, Dolores Cristina, was requested by the Cabinet to present a comprehensive paper on rent law reforms by October this year.
Last month, the minister presented a paper to Cabinet identifying gaps in information essential for government to make decisions on rent regulation.
Vassallo promised to outsmart the government: “With the government’s pace, we’ll never achieve anything, or it will be a piecemeal reform that solves nothing. We’ll present our own wide-ranging plan, not just about rent, which is only part of the problem. Reforming rent laws on their own will not lower property prices. We will propose incentives to increase people willing to rent their properties.”
karl@newsworksltd.com
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