Leader of the Opposition, Keith Azopardi – May Day and Workers Memorial Day Message

Way GSLP Run Gibraltar Short-Changes Workers and Businesses

The Government has a long track record of financial mismanagement and has not delivered much needed economic certainty.

Gibraltar would benefit if there was a different way of governing that delivered transparency and better controls over conflicts of interests, waste, or abuse. Public contracts and land deals need to be awarded more fairly and monitored better to deliver value for money for you.

The net effect of these deficiencies leads to the misuse of millions of pounds of your money. This penalises workers and businesses.

As we mark Workers Memorial Day and May Day over the next few days we reflect that this economic rigour on good financial practices and better management of our public finances could only be beneficial to all in our community. As a worker, business owner or someone in need of employment or better training the waste or abuse of public monies deprives you of a better future.

The long shadow of unprecedented debt and opaque financial practices affects how tax-payers’ monies are used or what is available to public sector workers or private sector business. There are rampant examples of waste or abuse in the use of public monies as has been clear from the latest Principal Auditors’ Reports and beyond.

This diminishes public resources and cheats the taxpayer. The way things are currently run by the present Government in terms of lax practices or the inability or unwillingness to properly deal with financial waste or abuse simply worsens the economic environment all citizens live in.

Additionally, almost 8 years after the BREXIT referendum Gibraltar is still gripped with the uncertainty of not having concluded the negotiations towards a Treaty for a new relationship with the EU.

All this hurts workers and the self-employed alike. It affects jobs and job creation, business profits and the ability to pay wages. It affects opportunity, diversification and the competitive economic environment within which business and workers’ rights should thrive.

Six months after the last election things have not improved in the field of financial management of your money or as to how Government handles the governance of Gibraltar. Indeed, the facts that have emerged since then all indicates a systemic political problem that would only be cured with the replacement of this Government that has lost its way so badly.