Oct 16 - Government: “Opposition Attempting To Convert Election Into An Auction”
Number Six has said that the GSD Opposition is already attempting to convert the election into an auction and its concomitant previously described by Mr Feetham as an entitlement culture. The Government says that the announcement of a self-proclaimed “gold-plated” training scheme “is by itself a glaring indictment” of the training policy that the GSD implemented during the sixteen years that they were in Government, which, says Number Six, by their own yardstick must have been a “tin plated” scheme.
A statement issued yesterday evening continued: “In this context their sudden conversion from “tin” to “gold” can only be seen as a case of better late than never, particularly their realisation that the construction industry relies on frontier workers precisely because of the failure to produce craft skills in all the years that they were in office. It will be recalled that the GSD argument in Parliament was always that local workers were not interested in construction sector jobs.
“It is important to understand that that for the duration of their time in office, the GSD defended the so-called VTS scheme. This provided for the placement of individuals with companies with no guarantee of a job placement at the end of it. In fact, there were people who had been on the scheme for seven or eight years with no prospect of a job in sight. Those on the GSD scheme were paid about £ 400 a month which was less than the minimum wage. It took the election of a new Government for this salary to be raised to the minimum wage and for a job guarantee in the private sector to be provided.
“Indeed, the view of the GSD Government was that Gibraltar had exhausted its supply of labour particularly in certain trades and that those on the unemployment list at the time, over 1000 people, were either unemployable or they did not want to work. The reality is that unemployment is now down below the 300 considered to be the equivalent of full employment by the GSD and that this is one of the successes of the policies of this Government.
“Moreover, it is also obvious that with his new team Mr Feetham has decided to abandon his previous call for an end to the entitlement culture and his much vaunted claim that the coming general election should not be an auction. Mr Feetham has attempted to start the auction already and the election has not even been called!”
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