Government must regulate rent market, PN MP tells precarious work forum

Opposition MP Stephen Spiteri urges government to step in to counter rapid rise in rent prices, civil liberties minister Helena Dalli says she will soon present fresh legislation to counter precarious work

PN MP Stephen Spiteri says government must intervene in the rent market (Photo: Chris Mangion)
PN MP Stephen Spiteri says government must intervene in the rent market (Photo: Chris Mangion)

Opposition MP Stephen Spiteri has called on the government to step in to regulate the property rental market, warning that prices are rising too rapidly.

"We cannot accept a state of play whereby rent prices keep increasing, to the detriment of people who cannot afford them, just because demand is consistently on the rise," he said. "The government of the day must step in to regulate rent prices."

Prime Minister Joseph Muscat warned on Tuesday that regulating the rental market would be "jumping the gun".

Spiteri was speaking at a political forum during a conference on precarious work organised by the General Workers' Union. In it, civil liberties minister Helena Dalli announced that the government will in a month's time present fresh legislation to clamp down on precarious work and took the previous PN administration to task for "ignoring" the problem.

"As an Opposition MP, I had warned that the government was employing people in precarious conditions, but it just outright denied doing so," she said. "After all those years of doing nothing, they know have the cheek to claim on their newspaper that this current government is ignoring the problem."

She recounted measures introduced by the Labour government to counter precarious work, such as streamlining salaries for workers employed by government and those employed by contractors, and blacklisting from public tenders companies found to employ workers in precarious conditions. 

Minister Michael Farrugia and Helena Dalli (Photo: Chris Mangion/MediaToday)
Minister Michael Farrugia and Helena Dalli (Photo: Chris Mangion/MediaToday)

Social solidarity minister Michael Farrugia said that he is open to a debate on whether the government should outright increase the minimum wage or continue down its track of offering top-ups to low-income earners.

"People on minimum wages now have several benefits, such as supplementary allowance, in-work benefits, and the tapering of benefits scheme," he said. "As of this Budget, a single parent on a minimum wage with two children can essentially now earn as much as €2,500 a month."

He added that the 2017 Budget also included a second consecutive increase in pensions, and that the government targets to eventually bring all pensions up to 60% of the average wage. 

Moreover, he said that government will soon commence discussions with social partners on how to tackle a problem whereby workers' social security contributions are only paid for hours worked under their main contractor, but not for those worked under subcontractors. 

"This is a type of precarious work, because social security contributions will one day impact employees' pensions. We must find a system, in collaboration with social partners, to clamp down on this."

Meanwhile, shadow social policy minister Paula Mifsud Bonnici called for employment laws against precarious work to be streamlined into one single law, so as to render them easier to enforce. 

"The laws are in place but are scattered all over the place and the time has come to look at them holistically and merge them into one serious law," she said. "We must also make it easier for workers to report poor work conditions, as many are scared to come forward because they don't want to risk losing their jobs."