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€0.90 WEDNESDAY EDITION WWW.MALTATODAY.COM.MT WEDNESDAY • 8 JANUARY 2014 • ISSUE 346 • PUBLISHED EVERY WEDNESDAY AND SUNDAY Editorial - PAGE 11 Minimum wage earners are at risk of poverty - Minister JEROME CARUANA CILIA SOCIAL Policy Minister Marie Louise Coleiro Preca admitted that minimum wage earners were at the risk of poverty. She said that the government was looking into the matter and would be addressing it in the coming months. Coleiro Preca insisted that far from being a myth, poverty remains very much a reality of contemporary life. Speaking on Monday's edition of Reporter, presented by Saviour Balzan, she said that social justice was at the centre of the Labour Party's agenda and insisted that she had no issue with the Labour government's vision of securing social justice through economic growth. Coleiro Preca said that over the decades, the world evolved and so did the Labour Party, which opened itself to liberal values and accepted new realities. However, synonymous with social justice, Coleiro Preca described herself as the "voice of the voiceless" and stressed that the lack of policies during previous legislatures produced a new class of vulnerable persons. The Malta Employers' Association supports the idea of a national minimum wage insofar as it is set a level that does not keep people out of employment. MEA Director General Joseph Farrugia said that the MEA has never spoken out against the minimum wage, and even in its presentations on the reform of the cost of living adjustment (COLA) has always Coleiro Preca insists that poverty still exists maintained that the minimum wage should always be adjusted by COLA, even if the COLA is not applicable to all income groups. "The issue of whether to support the minimum wage or otherwise centres around calibration. It has to be set at a level which does not disincentivise the generation and retention of jobs. This is the main reason why it can be subjected to periodical adjustment, as happens in the case of Malta through the COLA mechanism which provides for an annual upwards adjustment, and as has happened in Greece, which has seen it necessary to reduce the minimum wage by 22% as part of the austerity measures to combat the impact of the recession." CONTINUES ON PAGE 8 Charlon Gouder eyes European Parliamentary elections SEE PAGE 7 TIM ATTARD MONTALTO SHOP owners in Sliema said that despite the setbacks which online shopping and parking problems have brought with them, the shopper-turnout for the January sales has so far been slightly better than last year. MaltaToday visited a handful of shops in what has arguably become Malta's shopping haven, and found that the majority of owners witnessed a similar or slight increase when compared to last year. "The turnout for the sales has been slightly better than last year," one shop manager who preferred to remain anonymous said. CONTINUES ON PAGE 12 Ten years later, still no sign of a printed directory JAMES J. PISCOPO DESPITE legal obligations, and 10 years after the last printed telephone directory was released, there is still no sign of an updated version of the directory on the horizon, even though the Malta Communications Authority did not exclude the possibility of releasing a new edition. Asked what held the Authority back from issuing a printed telephone directory in the last decade, an MCA spokesperson referred to a 2011 attempt where three bidders did not satisfy the needed requirements, after a call for expression was issued. CONTINUES ON PAGE 6 Newspaper post Slight increase in Sliema shopper-turnout for January sales