Crucial questions on White Rocks remain unanswered – Joseph Muscat - UPDATED

Muscat was fielding questions as usual on Sunday morning from a party station journalist at Melita Gardens in Balzan.

“The Labour Party is in favour of environmentally and financially sustainable projects. Transparency on such projects is however required and expansion projects for factories and industry should also be given priority. A proper expansion strategy is also required and parliamentary scrutiny on such projects is essential. A conservative estimate for the land at White Rocks was €1 million per tumolo so its commercial value was probably much more than that and this is given out for free”.

Muscat said that it is useless reforming MEPA when such projects are simply fast tracked in the national interest. There are respected persons who are asking questions about this project. Was there a call for tenders for this project? Who is representing the consortium locally? Who will be the subcontractors? Accessibility is also an issue, the Labour leader insisted.

Muscat said that as usual, government promises a lot but only delivers more taxes when Budget time starts approaching.

“The country is plagued with too much uncertainty but the government finds tens of millions of Euro for a new parliament. The Mater Dei issue is also important as there is a difference of €25 million on the price of the original contract. It is impossible that six new departments will be built for the price tag of €6 million”.

He also referred to the saga of the Oncology Centre adding that this was quite incredible with venues being changed at regular intervals and which ended up with a parking area converted into a cancer hospital at a cost of over €40 million.

Muscat also mentioned the connection Lahmeyer International has with the interconnection project and insisted that Finance Minister Tonio Fenech should investigate this case. He also mentioned the fact that Transport Malta financial estimates will now longer be subject to parliamentary scrutiny adding that this was unacceptable.

Labour Deputy Leader Anglu Farrugia took the government to task over the corruption allegations in the Delimara power station extension. He said that nobody was going to take away Labour Party property in Siggiewi citing cases where the Nationalist Party also took over public property in an illegal manner.

In a reaction to Muscat's speech, the Nationalist Party issued a statement saying that the Labour leader wanted to deprive the nation of a state of the art sports village by raising doubts over the genuinity of government's intentions. It said that the cancer centre was also an important step forward for quality healthcare in the country adding that Labour was also against this project just for political gain. The statement also deplored Labour Deputy leader Anglu Farrugia's statement on the PL club in Siggiewi.