GOVERNMENT CHEQUES

Donate the money to charity, civil society group urges

The Civil Society Network has accused the government of vote-buying and urged people to donate cheques being sent by the finance ministry to charity.

Last week, Finance Minister Edward Scicluna said families are to receive cheques of between €15 and €35 to make up for the rising cost of bread and dairy products. The measure had originally been announced in the 2020 budget.

“The Civil Society Network is strongly encouraging everyone who cares about good governance to take the following action: instead of being bought off by a measly, one-off government cheque this week, donate the petty cash to your favourite charity as an act of protest,” the group said.

The CSN said that while these cheques might be useful in the short-term to some people, the truth is that they will have no meaningful impact on the standard of living of Maltese families in the long run.

“It would have been more fruitful had the government invested the sum of the cheques to eradicate the prevalent inequalities that plague our societies and improve the standard of living generally.”

Instead, the government has shown that it prefers issuing one-off cheques amounting to petty cash in a populistic fashion, it said.

The CSN insisted that there were more prudent actions available to the government and therefore it encouraged that “the cheque to be given to your favourite charity in protest of populistic, begging-bowl politics.”