ETC 'ill-equipped' to meet its challenges - Chircop

Opposition employment spokesman Karl Chircop said yesterday that the Employment and Training Corporation (ETC) was ill-equipped to meet the increased challenges and responsibilities it was facing.

Speaking during the parliamentary debate on the financial estimates of the corporation, Dr Chircop said the government was reducing the corporation's funding in real terms, despite the growing challenges and responsibilities it faced.

At the same time, the employment situation was going from bad to worse, with factories closing down and workers going on the dole, facing a shorter working week, inferior working conditions and competition from registered or unregistered foreign workers.

At the same time, the number of gainfully occupied had dropped by 810 in a year, a development never seen before in employment figures. And the future looked far from rosy, with industry losing competitiveness and foreign investment having dried up.

Dr Chircop said the government was also failing in its oft repeated aim of raising the participation rate of women in the labour sector. Female participation was down 33 per cent over the past five years. The number of women seeking work in 1997 reached 1,102 and it was now 1,500.

He said there remained a mismatch between the training courses being offered by the ETC and the clients it had, although he recognised that the corporation was making efforts to counter the situation. Most of the courses were for workers who were already skilled or semi-skilled, while most clients were unskilled.

He said that now that the corporation's chief executive had been removed, there was need for the government to appoint a person who was not so politically involved and enjoyed wider respect in the employment sector.

Dr Chircop said figures given earlier in the debate by Minister Louis Galea led one to wonder if they were living in different worlds. For the employment sector was facing a crisis in practically all sectors and the ETC was not finding the financial and human resources support it needed to face its challenges.

Unfortunately the unemployed were being increasingly seen as statistics by the Nationalist government.

Dr Chircop said there were unjustified discrepancies between the ETC's and the NSO's employment figures.

What was especially of concern was the fact that the highest number of unemployed were young people.

Those between 25 and 29 years registering for work had increased from 732 to 900 (+27 per cent) and those over 45 years increased from 1,691 to 1,900 over the past year. The unemployed in Gozo had risen from 400 to 600, and yet the Victoria job centre was being kept closed for some days each week.

Dr Chircop said that thanks to the dedication of the ETC employees, although the number of job vacancies had dropped by 10 per cent over the past year, job placements had declined by only 2.5 per cent.

It was the government's main responsibility to create the conditions for job creation.

The current crisis, however, pointed to the need for all concerned to be roped in for the employment problems to be tackled.

There needed to be not only a change for wider representation in the composition of the ETC's board but new focus on training and job placement services. He also felt the ETC's research section and that of the NSO could be linked. The law enforcement inspectorate should be strengthened, and stronger efforts should be made to tap EU funds. Unfortunately, nothing had been received yet from the European Social Fund.

Dr Chircop also spoke on employment for people with disabilities and pointed out that the job retention rate for such people was low. What was the ETC doing about gender equality, youth employment and long term unemployment?

Dr Chircop said the increasing pressure on the ETC's budget was shown by the fact that while government funding was being reduced by Lm67,000, the corporation also had to pay grants given to industry for employment training purposes. The ETC also had the new role of labour market surveillance according to EU criteria.

How could the government explain that the ETC's bill for travelling had gone up to Lm31,000 this year and would rise to Lm38,000 next year? What results were being achieved from this?

Concluding, Dr Chircop said that while the ETC had made progress, it faced a lot of challenges and was ill equipped to face them - the situation being such that the number of gainfully occupied, at 54 per cent, was the lowest in Europe.