The Politics of Opportunism: The Minimum Wage Fiasco

Good afternoon.

            While trying to defend his economic reasoning of  living wage and minimum wage, forgetting the former and shooting down the latter while ignoring completely the existence of yearly COLA, the leader of the Malta Labour Party Joseph Muscat reiterated that Lawrence Gonzi failed miserably in 3 electoral promises which are: reduction in income tax, Mepa, and Hospital waiting lists.

          Let us start with reduction in income tax. I will not go into the various budgetary measures done every year to stimulate economy and to reduce fiscal burden on the low income earners, but can anyone really believe this argument knowing what we and the world  have passed through with 2008 financial collapse of big companies and big banks resulting in financial collapse of big countries including European countries. This enitre mess started only a few years after the election. It is with good judgement and economic prowess that income tax rate was never raised. Just ask the Greeks, Spanish, Portuguese, Irish, and Italians. Dear Joseph would you have reduced the income tax rate if we were in that circumstance?

         What about the 'disastrous' Mepa reform? The Mepa reform is a continuous ongoing process. It will never stop and any criticism against Mepa will always be levelled, regardless of the best intentions of any government. The reform involves a process of removal of useless applications by having discussions between parties  before entering into official procedures. This would have taken ages to decide, and might still get refused. The reform has reduced Mepa's workload and saved the client his. It also involved the setting up of specific deadlines, whilst obliging Mepa to keep to those timeframes. A reform can never abolish nor reduce research procedures which enable the best possible sustainable development, especially in a small and densely populated island like ours which is dependent on development of tourism. Again I ask the question what was Joseph expecting from a Mepa reform? An application given in today, granted tomorrow?

        On to the topic of Hospital waiting lists. I have been a doctor for 30 years. I have always remembered waiting lists. During the Moran era patients could not choose their prefered consultant but where placed in an order of time and day. One never knew which consultant he was supposed to see. Now patients actually choose their consultant. In fact popular consultants have huge waiting lists whilst others have less. Now we have clinics for vascular surgery, general surgery, endocrinology, urology, gastroenterology, we have Trauma clinics etc... 

         Hospital treatment evolves continuously, whilst medical guidelines change. For example cardiac stents used few years ago are now obsolete, and stainless steel knee replacements are being replaced by ceramics (more costly but of better duration). Cervical cancer -a killer a few years ago- is now a preventable disease; at a hefty cost. Breast pathology and  breast checks are now being targeted by a specialised workforce; simple leg ulcers, tissue loss etc are being treated by specialised Tissue Viability Clinics, Specialised Burns units and Plastics were non existent in my days. Moreover, the ophthalmic branch of Mater Dei has done miracles in reducing cataract waiting lists and has invested in modern laser  apparatus to enable more patients to be seen quicker. We have also invested into outreach clinics at our health centres involving medical orthopaedic, gynaecology, family and now we shall also embark into gastroenterolgy surgery utilising public private partnerships which were so successful with the cataract, knee and hip replacement.

          It is very easy to cut waiting lists. Employ double the complement we have of consultants, ortopedics, gastroenterologists, general surgeons, triple the ancillary staff, get all to work 24/7, triple hospital services and also fork out for the logistics needed to keep this up. You will end up with 90% of Malta's budget on Health and having patients served next day (not that same day).

            

        With all the problems this country has faced in this past legislature, the Malta Labour Party under Joseph Muscat has listed only 3 areas where  we have failed miserably. Therefore the rest has been an outright success. Again, I am still waiting for the Malta Labour Party to give us its solutions for the present problems. I am absolutely certain that we will still hear them say that they will give us their views and solutions after the elections.

Michael