Updated| Finance minister rebuts allegation of lying about employee reclassification

Statement from the Nationalist Party had accused the government of hiding the truth about employment

The Nationalist Party has claimed that the Labour government has employed 3,700 employees within the public sector during the first 395 days of its tenure, amounting to almost 10 new employees per day.

"In 13 months, the total number of people newly employed with the government is 3,700. This includes the 2,042 which is the sum of people employed with the Government and an average of 1,625 of people who have retired." Minister Scicluna  had said that an average of 1,500 public sector employees retire every year.

In a statement, the PN accused Prime Minister Joseph Muscat of having “hidden the truth about employment” and claim that finance minister Edward Sciculna “lied by stating that the increase in the public sector employees is of because of reclassification." 

"Those who were employed with the public sector and now have been transferred under the heading of 'administration', had already been employed with the Government. So the 3,700 do not include these people."

The PN added that this had “cast doubts on any comment or declaration this government makes about the economy.” 

Contacted by MaltaToday, Scicluna stood by his original statements, accusing the Nationalist Party of attempting to misrepresent his statements for political gain. "The only time I discussed NSO classification was with regard to employment in the civil service - referred to as Public Administration - and not the public sector," the ministrer said.

"The full recording of my statement, which I made during a pre-Budget public consultation meeting on Monday 15 September, is available publicly through YouTube."

Scicluna added that since then, both the National Statistics Office and the Malta Statistics Authority have issued statements that clarified the NSO’s original release as incorrect. "Public Administration was in fact not the sector employing the highest number of employees,” he said.