Muscat pledges higher enforcement on foreign-owned shops

Prime Minister Joseph Muscat pledged to beef up regulatory enforcement on shops owned by immigrants, saying it is only fair that they and Maltese shopowners should play by the same rules. 

“Foreign and Maltese shop-owners should abide by the same regulation, but unfortunately enforcement is lacking,” he admitted.

He was speaking at an open Cabinet meeting with mayors and councillors at the Fgura primary school, in response to a complaint about immigrants by Marsa councillor Frank Zammit.

“Marsa residents aren’t racist, but they are fed up of the arrogant attitude displayed by some immigrants,” he said. “They are no longer limited to the Marsa Open Centre but have now spread out across the locality.”

Muscat said that he sympathized with the concerns of Marsa citizens, agreeing that they weren’t the result of racism and noting that he heard personal stories of immigrants integrating with the town’s residents.

He said that a new system aimed at banning the exploitation of immigrants waiting for job offers by the Marsa roundabout will soon be implemented, after a consultation period ended a few weeks ago. A jobs centre– operated by government employment agency Jobs+ - will be set up in Marsa and will charge employers for coupons to be handed out to immigrants instead of cash. The immigrants will then be able to exchange their coupons for cash at the jobs centre.

During the meeting, the councillors from the Southern Harbour District summarized the state of their localities, with many of them praising the Labour government for investing in the South. Several complaints were related to local council funding, traffic, parking, and waste management.

Valletta mayor Alexei Dingli urged government to beef up enforcement against contractors who work without permits, shop owners who illegally set up tables and chairs in the streets, and abuses of resident parking schemes.

He also called for more police to be allocated to the Valletta police station, warning that some residents are scared at the consequences of the capital’s growing popularity with youth.

Marsaxlokk mayor Horace Gauci said that historical buildings should be restored as part of a €6 million project announced recently, while Marsaskala mayor Mario Calleja praised the upcoming construction of the ‘American University of Malta’ at Zonqor Point, and called for the rehabilitation of the former Jerma Hotel.

In his opening speech, Fgura mayor Byron Camilleri warned that the traffic situation in his locality has deteriorated, and that it is now traffic-heavy at every hour of the day.

“We urge government to hold a meeting with the council, so that together we can plan new alternative roads to divert traffic from the heart of Fgura,” he said, while also calling for more open spaces in the locality.

Muscat said that the government is weighing up options to address the long-standing problem of shortages in local government funding, but warned that such a solution will not be easy.

“Previous public-private partnership schemes for large infrastructural projects left councils drowning in debt, and any solution must be more reasonable than that,” he said.

He toasted his government’s investment in the South of Malta, arguing that growing traffic and cleanliness problems in the region are the consequence of increased economic activity.

“Together we are addressing the misbalance that existed for many years, when economic activity used to take place in the centre and the north of the island, and the south was left as the industrial relic of the 1970s and 80s.”