There does not seem to be a wide interest among the Maltese to learn Arabic despite so many years of close contact and good relations with Libya, which is still ongoing, not to mention contacts with other Arab countries such as Tunisia, with which we recently signed an agreement on joint oil exploration.

We are now going to have the SmartCity project owned by an Arab company from Dubai. This project is on everyone's lips, mainly of course because of the great number of jobs it is expected to generate.

Although it seems as though there is not much need for locals to learn and use this particular language, foresight should dictate otherwise.

For example, with regard to the SmartCity project, a lot of emphasis is being placed on the need to prepare people in IT so as to be able to fill as many as the posts required, and rightly so, IT being the main activity tied to this project.

But it seems that nobody is mentioning the importance of training and preparing students to be able to understand the language of their future employers.

It is true that most Arab countries are now learning English and fast. It is also true that most IT is also taught in English. But it would also be quite advantageous for Maltese to learn Arabic especially if they are interested in this and other projects where Arabs are involved.

Knowing another language apart from one's own is always important and much more so if learning another language is aligned to one's job.

The SmartCity project is surely a case in point. Maltese youths would feel more than well equipped to apply for the well-paid posts that the project envisages if besides being well versed in IT and English they were also proficient in Arabic. Besides, they would be able to compete for other international posts offered by the Arab company.

And for us Maltese, learning Arabic is not that much of a hurdle, since it is so similar to our own language. Most Maltese can speak two other languages besides their own - English and Italian. Quite a number of us also know French, having studied it at school, while language courses in Spanish and German provided mainly by the Spanish and German Circles are quite popular.

Courses in Arabic have been provided locally for a number of years principally by the Libyan Arab Cultural Centre in Valletta and the Islamic Centre at Corradino in Paola. The University of Malta has in recent years set up its own department of Arabic, which is quite an achievement considering the number of years that Arabic has been taught in Malta.

In one form or other Arabic has been taught in Malta for some time. Its teaching in Malta officially dates back to 1637 when a school for the teaching of Arabic was set up in Gozo through a decree of none other than the Vatican's Sacred Congregation for the Propagation of Faith. In fact, the land for the school was offered by Mgr M.J. Balaguer, then Bishop of Malta.

More recently, the teaching of Arabic language in Malta on a large scale goes back to 1975-76 when, through a cultural and educational agreement between Malta and Libya, a group of 12 Libyan teachers arrived to start lessons in Arabic in state schools.

At that time no special textbooks were available to teach Arabic to Maltese students so instead books that were used in primary schools in Libya were given for free. Arabic lessons at that time were optional but then it was made a compulsory subject in both government and private secondary schools.

One should appreciate the great assistance that Libya gave the Maltese government when it asked for help to teach Arabic to Maltese students. Libya sent more teachers and commissioned Rageb Diaf, the Libyan supervisor of Arabic teaching in Malta, to produce an Arabic textbook specially written and designed for Maltese students. Books I, II, III, IV and V were published in succession and the Libyan authorities provided hundreds of copies of this series of books free of charge.

These textbooks were later recorded onto tapes, which were distributed freely, apart from over 15,000 charts to be used as visual aids. Libya also provided, free of charge, thousands of exercise books and a steady flow of teachers of Arabic.

All this catered for 15,000 Maltese students in Government schools and another 2,500 students in private schools. Besides, an annual prize day for successful students of Arabic was organised. The brightest students were given handsome prizes and were periodically offered free trips to Libya.

One would have imagined that such a titanic effort would now have resulted in hundreds of Maltese adults knowing Arabic well, but alas, it was not to be. The main reason was that Arabic was suddenly made a compulsory subject.

It was also a time when everything was being politicised, and Arabic language teaching became a political ploy. Experience has shown that making things compulsory is counter-productive, and this, coupled with partisan politics, prevented the teaching of Arabic from becoming popular in Malta.

As a consequence interest in learning Arabic waned. However, this does not mean that the teaching of Arabic at that time was not fruitful at all. It is due to these past efforts that we now have Maltese who are able to teach Arabic.

As mentioned earlier, it was a pity that the teaching of Arabic was made compulsory and abruptly made an additional burden on the students. It has now been accepted that this was a mistake and should never be repeated.

However, promoting interest in a language is a different matter. Showing and explaining benefits that are tied up with learning a particular language, in this case Arabic, would certainly cajole students to go in for it.

After all, the similarity of our native tongue to the Arabic is a providential benefit. No other EU member state has this asset; let's exploit it to our own advantage! With a little effort we can even make Arabic speakers understand us.

As Minister of Education Dr Louis Galea put it when inaugurating a University of Malta diploma course in Arabic, "If Malta wants to fulfil its role as a bridge between Europe and North Africa, it has to invest in the creation of an Arabic speaking workforce" and "now that Malta is an EU member, it had a sea of opportunities, particularly from Arab countries, 21 [countries] with 250 million inhabitants, to take advantage of."

Stressing the economic benefits that could be thus derived, Minister Galea said that "if the goal of raising awareness of the wealth of the Arabic culture and acquiring expertise in the language continue to be neglected, Malta would lose out".

This is why it is pertinent to state that learning Arabic and being able to speak it and write it can put us Maltese way ahead of other countries. This will surely give an advantage to Maltese students later on when seeking important posts with Arab-oriented international companies.

The SmartCity project will surely be the basis of opening job opportunities for Maltese personnel not only in its establishment in Malta but also for well-paid posts in Dubai itself, which has become an international commercial hub. The possibilities of gaining access to attractive posts in other Arab countries through this project are real, so the more well equipped Maltese students are, the better their prospects will be.

Ask those Maltese companies which have opened shop in Libya, which itself is becoming a Mecca for investment; all can vouch for the advantages of speaking and writing Arabic.

Local companies with a foothold in Libya which have the opportunity to have a presence in Dubai would surely be able to advance further in neighbouring countries as well. And then there are the possibilities of advancing into Africa with our English, Italian, French... and Arabic.

One perhaps may deem this as daydreaming, but surely the opportunities are there. Learning Arabic is quite accessible and particularly for us in Malta it is not that much of a hurdle. Let's start to be really smart about it.