International research firms interested in Mater Dei

The government is evaluating proposals received from major international research companies interested in co-operating with Mater Dei Hospital, Prime Minister Lawrence Gonzi said yesterday.

Speaking at a business breakfast organised by MediaToday, Dr Gonzi said Mater Dei Hospital offered a lot of potential for international co-operation but more details would be announced at the appropriate time.

The Prime Minister said one of the major challenges the country faced was whether it would be able to produce the required workforce to propel the economy forward. He appealed to employers to find ways of working with the government to attract women to the labour market and to retain them. Concepts such as flexi-time and the creation of a flexible working environment would contribute to this end.

If more women participated in the economy it would avoid having to import labour from abroad, which would lead to a loss of competitiveness.

Dr Gonzi noted that Malta's economy was immediately affected by international developments such as the ever rising price of oil and grain.

"Issues that affect other economies and don't affect us directly, hit us indirectly. If the German and other big economies are badly affected, this has an impact on us," he said. On the other hand, if the global economy were to settle, Malta would actually perform better than projected.

The government, he said, had embarked on an ambitious programme three years ago and several people had expressed doubts about whether the country could attain such challenging aspirations. It not only met them but passed with flying colours.

"We were at a crossroads. We needed the courage to go for it rather than fearing the unknown. The secret is in refusing mediocrity and short cuts, and working without a sense of inferiority."

The time when people moaned and groaned about problems was over and people had to think about solutions, he said.

Dr Gonzi recalled that in a recent meeting with French industrialists he had told them that although Malta had not yet struck oil it had the best resource one could have because unlike oil, it was not finite and the more one pumped into it, the more it gave in return. This was Malta's human resources.

"This is what guides our decisions on how to spend the money. The government could have opted to spend Lm25 million and remove the surcharge but it chose to pump the money into education so that students will be better prepared to do today's and tomorrow's jobs, and the economy will perform better for that."

He said the government was very interested in funding research and design projects that were relevant to the country, such as waste recycling, turning waste into energy, as well as wind, solar and wave projects that could lead to tangible solutions to various problems.