What’s in it for you?

Cost of Living Adjustment (COLA) of €1.75 a week. Workers to get an additional day of leave (from 24 to 25 days). 200,000 workers to receive tax refund cheques. Minimum wage to increase by €3.

SOCIAL

• Pensions will be increased by €2 per week. Some 90,000 pensioners will benefit from a total of €9 million. • Elderly people who move to a residential home will have their pension deducted by 60 per cent instead of 80 per cent if they give up the home they had been renting from the government. • The government will be reimbursing couples who go abroad for adoption purposes up to a maximum of €10,000.

• The government will continue to give the orphan allowance to children who lose their parents, irrespective of whether they are in employment or not, until they reach 21 years of age. • Foster care allowance will rise from €70 a week to €100 a week. • Drug addicts allowance will go up from €30 to €40 a week.

PROPERTY

• The government will be publishing a white paper to discuss rental market problems. It plans to find a balance between the needs of landlords and tenants. • The first-time buyer scheme will be extended and a secondtime buyer scheme has been introduced. People moving into a larger home or downgrading to a smaller one can save up to €3,000 on stamp duty. If the buyer is disabled, the reduction will go up to a maximum of €5,000.

• Duty paid on property bought in Gozo will remain at 2% instead of 5% for another year.

• The Housing Authority will grant up to €25,000 for the upgrading of abandoned houses in return for them being leased to the authority to be used as social housing. Owners will be able to rent the premises at favourable rates for 10 years. The offer will be open to the first 100 applicants.

TRANSPORT

• All youths between the ages of 16 and 20 can now use public transport free for a year. Last year it was just 18-year-olds. • The Roads Agency will be launched. This will then start implementing the PL electoral pledge of reconstructing all roads within a seven-year period.

• The government will enter into discussions so that school transport can be made free of charge for both state and independent school students in the 2018/19 scholastic year. • New incentives to encourage use of bicycles, motorcycles, scooters and electric cars.

ENVIRONMENT

• The waste separation pilot project is now going nationwide. •Fines for littering and dumping will be stepped up. •A desalination plant will be developed in picturesque }ondoq ir-Rummien. •One tree to be planted for every child born.

EDUCATION

•SEC fees to be slashed by half next year, and removed completely the following year.

•Government pledges better working conditions for teachers.

•Four new schools to be built in Marsascala, Victoria, Qawra and G\ira.

•Tax exemption for people reading for a master’s degree or PhD.