Labour MPs accused the government of broken promises during the employment debate in parliament on Friday, with EU affairs spokesman Evarist Bartolo also pointing out that jobs needed to be created not only for the unemployed, but also for those who were currently opting not to work.
Mr Bartolo said the country needed a comprehensive social and economic plan that proposed solutions to the problem of competitiveness.
He said Malta had one of the lowest labour force participation rates in Europe, at 59 per cent. Jobs needed to be created for these people, also to boost government income to sustain the welfare system, education and pensions.
He said the people who were unemployable presented another serious problem. Some 2,000 teenagers were leaving school without passes in the basic subjects, the Malta post-secondary retention rate was the lowest in Europe, and Malta also had one of the lowest proportions of graduates in science and technology. Three quarters of youths registering for work did not have the job skills to find employment even if foreign investment did come.
It was an illusion that the European Union would guarantee success. Some longtime EU members had not created the economic climate to create jobs and wealth, or to redistribute the wealth properly.
Referring to comments by Tourism Minister Francis Zammit Dimech, Mr Bartolo said world tourism might have declined by 1.3 per cent overall last year, with Malta's decline being 0.6 per cent, but tourist numbers in southern Europe had stayed the same and in other areas they had risen significantly, including in the Middle East. It would be a mistake not to address the structural problems in tourism and hide behind the excuse of Sars and terrorism.
Leo Brincat (MLP) said he was surprised that some had objected to the protest held in Valletta by the GWU on Tuesday. That was a democratic right enjoyed everywhere in Europe. The UHM had no such reservations in December 1997.
The MLP, Mr Brincat said, would be at the forefront in working for the country to have economic growth, competitiveness and social cohesion. In this it had the support of European socialists.
But the first thing Malta needed was for the government to wake up and admit that Malta was losing competitiveness.
The finance minister in reply to a parliamentary question had admitted that unemployment would still rise further this year and was expected to reach 5.5 per cent, according to ETC figures.
Statistics from the Labour Force Survey were even more worrying, showing an unemployment rate of 8.2 per cent. Malta clearly needed a comprehensive plan to get it out of the investment and employment crisis it was facing.
The MLP would be four square behind any efforts to cut red tape, but the problem, he feared, also involved inefficiency and laziness. There was also a need for a skills strategy to match job training with needs.
Silvio Parnis (MLP) said the unemployed were not interested in nice words, but wanted jobs.
The Labour opposition would continue to criticise the government for ignoring labour problems, while also proposing alternatives, as the GWU had done. The party would also show solidarity with the unemployed and those whose job was at risk.
Stefan Buontempo (MLP) said the government could not remain passive when every Maltese was suffering from the Nationalists' incompetence and broken promises. In all sectors, the country was in dire straits, while the government was taking measures that continued to erode competitiveness.
The burden of taxes was getting ever heavier, and added to the cost of living increase, every family was this year having to fork out Lm7.50 more every week.
Carmelo Abela, opposition spokesman on education, said globalisation was certainly one of the causes of unemployment. But there were domestic causes too, among them the government's fiscal policies, the increase in taxes and costs which stifled investment, and excessive bureaucracy.
Lifelong learning was a high priority issue in the EU, but the number of Maltese workers currently in training was low compared to Europe. What was the government doing to boost this sort of training?
He said the Opposition was ready to work with the government in the field of education, as the sector was vital for future investment. More money needed to be poured into education.
Marie Louise Coleiro (MLP) said the Labour Force Survey report, issued on Friday afternoon, was evidence of the critical employment situation, with over 13,100 seeking work, an increase of 3,000 in a year.
It was worrying that the average age of unemployed men was 23 and that of women, 27. Such statistics showed the urgent need for the governemnt to invest in education and the training of workers. Only in that way could Malta be competitive.
A person without work was a person without dignity, and it was for this reason that the government needed to act in the field of employment.
The Occupational Health and Safety Authority employed 26 people but only 16 were involved directly with the implementation of the rules on health and safety.
Was it enough to secure the workers when Malta had a labour force of over 45,000?
Anglu Farrugia (MLP) said it would have been more opportune for Malta to have held the elections now as the Maltese people would have been able to gauge better the promises made by the Nationalist Party.
The government had lost all credibility in financial administration, as well as job creation. Malta was one of the countries in the world with the highest public debt. It was lucky that this debt was local, for if it wasn't, Malta would have faced a similar situation as that faced by Argentina.
George Vella (MLP) said the government knew it was sinking fast, but the prime minister had gone on record speaking as if the country's current problems had only appeared now, rather than admit that those problems were already well known long before the elections.
Where were the government's plans for regeneration after so many years of supposed preparations?
Dr Vella said government speakers had criticised only the last two lines of the Labour motion, which said the government was paralysed in several important sectors. These included the implementation of EU rules.
The only reason the government was in power was the way it had tucked away the country's problems out of sight, and ridiculed all of Labour's warnings.
He feared that Malta would not be able to utilise EU funds allocated to it because the government lacked proper planning.
Dr Vella appealed to the government to get rid of its arrogance and name-calling and call a spade a spade. It was not true that Ireland did well immediately on joining the EU: it had taken the country some years before things started to look up, and this was only after it had touched rock-bottom. Malta needed a strategic economic development plan on the lines of the series of three-year programmes for economic and social prgrammes drawn up by Ireland.
Malta could only be saved by the Maltese. Even in important EU member countries, such as Britain, there were a number of regions that were still badly underdeveloped. But government, unions, constituted bodies, thinkers and others had got together to set out a programme for national recovery.
Malta, too, badly needed to recover. The worst the government could do was to continue to ignore the signs of the country's ills.
It did not make sense for the government to resort to tactics intended to entice foreign enterprise and capital to Malta by going out of pocket. Funds should be well used, and this could only be done with sound planning.
Concluding, Dr Vella called for a rethink by the government in order to give Malta the recovery that it so badly needed.
Anton Refalo (MLP) said the government had not even bothered to nominate a Gozitan representative to the MCESD, even though it called it a separate region. If things were going badly in Malta, the more so in Gozo where 500 families had lost their livelihood.
The sister island had been left to its own resources, even though there was a minister. Industries that used to employ hundreds of workers had closed down or were about to do so, because there was no serious planning for the island.
Tourism to the island was on the brink of collapse, with hotels going out of business in winter or for good.
Gozo needed the transition from words to deeds, concluded Dr Refalo.