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The continuing crisis in the poultry sector and the arrogant evasiveness of an incompetent minister makes it necessary for the Opposition to continue its pressure in parliament in order to obtain clear information.
This seems to be the only way to lead the PN into more transparent and better government and away from the arrogant secrecy which so weakens its management of the country.
The latest publicity bandwagon of the Ministry for the Environment and Rural affairs has been the inauguration of a chicken processing plant in Qrendi, the owners of which had invested Lm500,000 on upgrading. This comes a few days after the shutdown of Buxom Poultry, which spent Lm800,000 after the PN government’s encouragement and assurances. Buxom claim they were refused any support, despite written assurances.
Therefore we must insist on the answers to the following questions:
1. Why did the Minister state that the government would be using funds not used by the industry in 2004 and 2005, when in 2004 there were insufficient funds, so that processors were not paid any subsidies for broilers slaughtered between October and December, since the threshold of 7,000 tons had been reached by end September? Does he not know this?
2. Does the Minister realise that his own policy helped create the crisis by reducing the poultry production subsidy to 7,000 tons from 10,000 tons live weight?
3. Why were no funds received from the EU as was promised?
4. Was any proper formal application for safeguard funds ever submitted to the EU, or was only a weak verbal request made?
5. Why did the Ministry deny that there were problems in the poultry sector for over a year, when early recognition and action could well have lessened the impact, saving jobs?
6. Has the Minister taken appropriate steps to identify, expose and punish the companies and/or individuals who damaged the local poultry industry and cheated the people by importing cheap frozen chicken, defrosted it, and sold it as fresh local produce?
7. What steps has he taken to prevent this from happening again?
8. Why was this fraud exposed by an external report from the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) of the United Nations, published in the report on Agriculture by APS bank, and not detected by the Ministry’s own system?
9. Will the Ministry let down the Qrendi plant in the same way it did Buxom?
I can assure the Maltese people that I shall be leading the pressure through parliamentary questions to ensure the Minister does his duty and answer the public for his conduct.
Noel Farrugia MP (MLP)
Spokesperson for Agriculture,
Fisheries and
Rural Development
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