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By the Campaign for National Independence CNI
TELL YOUR PARLIAMENTARY DEPUTY THAT YOU WANT MALTA TO REGAIN INDEPENDENCE AND FREEDOM
In the seven years 2007 – 2014 the Maltese and Gozitans are going to pay the European Union €420,000,000
By
Dr Karmenu Mifsud Bonnici
The
European Union showed unbridled harshness with the Maltese people when in the
Membership Treaty of Malta in the Union, signed in Athens, on 16 April 2003, it
ordered that the Malta Shipyards
* shall not make more than 2.4 million man-hours of work each year,
* they cannot build ships more than 10,000 tons each year,
* that Dock Number 1 of Bormla shall be closed for at least ten years, and
*
that the productive workforce should be reduced
to 1,410.
It is a fitting question that should be made as to why the European Union
dictated to the Maltese Government all these harsh conditions about the
Shipyards to accede to its request to join the Union?
The excuse that was given was that these conditions formed part of the restructuring plan for the Shipyards, spread on a seven-year period.
The
seven years started in January 2002, although the Membership Treaty had to come
into effect from 1 May 2004.
The European Union also fixed the amount of government financial aid that cold
be given to the Maltese Shipyards till the end of 2008, and decided that
afterwards, no more aid can be granted.
As a result of the Membership Treaty of 2003,
* hundreds of workers have been discharged from the Shipyards, and
* hundreds others were sent on pension,
* or took an amount of money to leave their employment.
With
them was lost a patrimony of years of experience in ship repair and shipbuilding
and a great heritage of trades and trade abilities was destroyed.
That what the European Union decided for the Maltese Shipyards, crippled them,
instead of straightening them.
In
January this year Engineer Lawrence Ciantar, who was trained in the Shipyard and
for many years managed Enemalta, apart from other offices that he occupied, thus
wrote about the Union plans for the Malta Shipyard.
”The
so-called restructuring plan was nothing else except an exercise to reduce the
number of workers to reduce the current expenditure. No new investment was made
in modern tools and machinery to increase the efficiency and quality of work. No
employee training was held in new technologies, and particularly in management.
The decrease in apprentice intake, so much required for the Shipyard to continue
to develop, reduced greatly the Shipyard potential for the coming years.
On
the contrary, the management of the Shipyard was effectively padded into foreign
management hands. Apart from this, some of the contracts won by the Shipyard
were passed on to foreign contractors, who employed foreign workers with them.
Thus, these contractors benefited from the profits, and the work experience also
went outside the country while the country suffered losses on the contracts. This
situation had a strong negative impact on the workers on the moral of the
Maltese workers”.
This writing by Engineer Ciantar accuses both the European Union that imposed the plan for the Shipyards and the Maltese Government that accepted it.
Now that the plan appears not to have achieved that the Shipyard does not incur losses,
* they are throwing all the blame on the lack of productivity of the workers,
* and not on the lack of ability and mismanagement of the management,
* mistaken devious Government policy,
*
and the disastrous agreement imposed upon it by the European Union.
The
greatest sacrileges of the agreement about the Maltese Shipyards are
* the limits that it makes on the productive workers,
* on the amount of work that could be made each year, and
*
the closure of a Dock.
Instead of trying to bring as much work as we can for the Shipyard, we ended up refusing work.
Instead of employing as much Maltese workers as we can, we ended up employing foreign workers, which reached more than 800 in a year.
Instead
of making use of all docks that we have, in a scandalous and irresponsible
manner we close one of them for ten years.
When the
Government boasted that it had forgiven the debt of the Drydocks and
Shipbuilding, it did not tell the people that it had acquired without any
payment
* the docks,
* quays,
* workshops,
* machinery,
* plant,
* tools,
* cranes and
* the abilities in trades and work experience of the 1,410 productive workers that the kept in employment.
Government
representatives cover their incompetence by all the time painting an ugly
picture of the Shipyard workers, instead of encouraging them and increasing
their moral.
They
give the public to understand that it will be better not to carry the burden of
aid to the Shipyard when it is in the interests of the Maltese people to
continue to protect the mine of tradesmen that the nation greatly requires at
any time.
There are two points that the European Union and those who serve it in our
country insist upon about the Shipyard.
One is that Union does not permit that state aid be given to commercial companies because it is against the rules of market competition.
The
second point is that the country should not carry the burden of the financial
aid tat is given for the company to continue to operate.
On these two points, those who insist upon them are not right.
* Neither the market competition rules
* nor the burden of financial aid on the people
* overcome the social and economic advantages
* of not destroying the heritage of trades in ship repair and ship building in our country,
* and of not closing the best trades and training school in our country,
* as well as not failing from using the useful facilities of the docks and
*
quays
that our country has invested so much to build them.
If we want to evade a confrontation with the European Union about state aid to
the Shipyard commercial company we can choose two ways.
We can consider the Shipyard as a workshop for the practical trades training for youths that are given theoretical training at the College for Science and Technology at Kordin, and for this training the Shipyard is paid by the Department of Education.
We can also not leave the Shipyard as a commercial company, and absorb it as a governmental department, as is the Public Works Department and its sections and workshops.
Thus
the 1,410 Shipyard workers become Government employees and will be counted with
the more than 30,000 workers and employees tat the Government has employed with
it.
This step shall not mean that the Government will have to pay an additional 1,401 wages.
It means paying not more than an additional 352 wages if one calculates the spending of the Shipyard in one year, and its income, there will be an unbalance of an amount equivalent of one quarter of all the wages of all the 1,410 Shipyard workers.
Thus
with an increase of an amount equivalent to 352 wages, the government will save
from paying a greater amount in unemployment benefits and social assistance to
1,410 workers.
Even financially it will be better for the people that the Shipyard becomes a
government department, apart from the enormous social and industrial advantages
for our country that the Shipyard workers remain employed.
After all, the Shipyard is part of the National Patrimony.
The
modern and progressive are in favour of neutrality
Those
who today want to change what the Constitution of Malta says about neutrality
probably did not agree with it when we introduced it in the Constitution in
1987.
They are boasting that they are modern and progressive.
They do not realize that there is nothing modern and progressive in countries taking part in wars.
Countries
have long been doing so since antiquity and not because they are progressive,
but because they are aggressive.
They tell us that in the present circumstances it is not in our country’s
interest to remain neutral.
They
do not realize that today, when many of the people of the rest of the world are
hostile to the Western block, we will be better off by them not being against us
if they see that we are not aligned militarily with the West.
We are insisting that membership in the European Union does not let our country
to remain neutral.
They
forget that prior to the referendum on membership, the leaders of the Union and
their puppets in our country assured the people that neutrality according to the
constitution is not against membership in the European Union and that therefore
there was no need for it to be changed.
If we revise what the Constitution says on neutrality, we should make it
stronger and more restrictive, we introduce the clear right of filing a case
against the Government if it takes such a step as to breach neutrality as there
is when some fundamental right is breached
If we really want to be progressive, we introduce in the Constitution that we work for general disarmament and the destruction of weapons of mass destruction and deny the use of military force in the relations between the peoples.
Thursday
17 April 2008.
WE WANT INDEPENDENCE FROM THE EUROPEAN UNION
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