Government spending on childcare centres falling - Chircop

Opposition employment spokesman Karl Chircop complained in Parliament yesterday that the government's financial allocation for childcare centres would decrease next year, despite declarations that such centres were important to help women go back to employment.

Dr Chircop said during a debate on the financial estimates of the Employment and Training Corporation that the low female participation rate in the labour force was one of the government's biggest failures, denying the economy an important resource.

Dr Chircop said the government was trying to give the impression that the economy was growing and so were job numbers. Yet the only significant increase was in part-time jobs, under poor working conditions which amounted to exploitation. He knew of a part-time cleaner in a school who lost her job after suffering back pain as a result of her work. Private companies subcontracted by the government were also abusing.

It should be a matter of concern that 26,000 households depended on a part-time job. In just the second half of 2006 the number of part-time jobs grew by 7.5 per cent while the growth rate of full-time jobs had actually slowed, as Dr Sant showed in his speech on Monday.

It was also worrying that Malta's competitiveness was not faring well. The World Economic Forum had placed Malta in 19th place among EU countries. Most of the new EU member states had fared better.

The employment rate in Malta between 2003-2005 dropped by 0.3 per cent while it grew by 0.9 per cent in the EU. The female participation rate was also the lowest in the EU. This was clearly a government failure. This was a problem which had been allowed to fester. The government only started to address it three years ago, but more effective measures were needed for real progress to be made. Figures showed that the percentage of women seeking work had increased from 31 to 34 per cent or 1,633, the second highest in five years, the highest having been only 24 more. Government measures announced last year had clearly not worked.

Female participation in ETC training courses had dropped by 15 per cent from last year, a situation which needed to be urgently reversed. What had become of the ETC's Gender Equality Unit?

But there were other problems. The economy was not yielding enough good full-time jobs for women. The government was not investing in affordable child-care centres which would enable many mothers to go to work. Indeed, the budget figures showed that funding for child care centres would actually decrease by between 50,000 and Lm70,000 next year.

A Labour government was promising to set up a number of child care centres as one of a series of measures to encourage women to seek employment.

Dr Chircop said he was pleased to note a drop in the percentage of youth unemployment, but it was also a fact that many young people were not bothering to register for work. The ETC needed to attract them to its training courses in order to raise their employment chances. The number of young people following the courses had actually dropped by a quarter from last year. Many simply did not know about them.

Dr Chircop said the ETC also needed to work more closely with guidance teachers in schools.

Turning to the long-term unemployed, Dr Chircop said the ETC report gave the impression that their number had decreased. But the report could be misleading. A person registering for a long time who worked only for, say, two weeks and then started to register again was shown as a new job seeker!

Dr Chircop said the government's measures on Gozo were also too little, too late. The employment situation there reached alarming levels years ago but the government had ignored it.

Dr Chircop said the ETC's Employment Advisory Services needed to become more professional and providers needed to be well trained. People should not go away with the impression that there was a campaign for people to be struck off the employment register for lame excuses. Had the time come for the ETC to work with private sector employment services companies? Could particular sectors be farmed out?

The Labour MP called on the authorities to monitor the situation of part-timers. Some part-timers were being registered as self-employed by employers without their own knowledge, with the ETC accepting termination forms which did not carry the signature of the employees!

The Department of Industrial Relations needed to be better resourced so that it could efficiently handle complaints by workers. At the moment there was a nine-month backlog of cases to be heard. Companies employing part-timers needed to declare who their shareholders and directors were so that workers could not be moved abusively from one firm to another so that their hours of work in each company was shown to be low.

Dr Chircop said employment schemes had improved but he felt that, with regard to the redeployment scheme, payments to employers were taking too long to be issued. How many of the 149 workers were still with the employers who had received the subsidy?

Turning to law enforcement, Dr Chircop said the number of Maltese caught working without a permit was at an all-time low. Was this political opportunism? After all, the number of foreigners caught working illegally had increased.

The ETC report also showed a rising number of applications for the employment of foreigners. Some 8,000 work permits were issued this year, a rise of 20 per cent over last year. Why was this happening? Why were permits even issued for cleaners and construction workers? One could not but suspect cheap labour. Who was accountable for these permits?

It was worrying that the number of apprentices in the apprentice scheme was declining. Why was this happening? Were they not finding sponsors?

Were tracer studies being held to find out what was happening to workers who followed the ETC's courses?

The MLP was proposing the creation of a committee including the ETC and employers to discuss training courses tailored to the needs of the economy.

Concluding, Dr Chircop said an MLP government was promising working conditions for part-timers that were comparable to those of full-timers, a reinstitution of public holidays, measures to raise women's participation rate and a reduction of the surcharge by half.

Joe Abela (MLP) insisted that the benefits of the global economy needed to be distributed fairly among everybody. Even in Malta, there were many who did not have a decent wage.

Referring to courses being offered to unemployed persons, Mr Abela said that people aged over 40 were finding it difficult to learn new skills. He praised the Jesuits and the Zejtun local council's initiative to offer courses to adults and the Paole Frere Institute.

Mr Abela complained that some employers were still prejudiced against persons with disability and former prison inmates. The ETC should work harder to ensure places of work were accessible to persons with disability.

Mr Abela suggested that the ETC provide a one-stop-shop for refugees so that these would not continue being exploited. Their dignity must be respected and their conditions regulated. Concluding, Mr Abela suggested that the ETC be involved in the Scoops project.

Labour MP Silvio Parnis said that the Labour governments of the 1970s gave the workers the rights and dignity they deserved.

Now, care should be given to the future of those employed at ST Micoelectronics and the dockyards.

Mr Parnis said that university students were finding it difficult to find proper employment.

He called on employers not to exploit immigrants and appealed to the ETC to take the necessary steps.

Notary Marie-Louise Coliero Preca (MLP) said competitiveness played an important part in the economy but that should not mean exploitation would be allowed. The exploitation of part-timers was blatant and needed to be reined it.

It was unacceptable that part-timers were being forced by employers to register as self-employed, thus becoming ineligible for various benefits.

Malta, she said, must influence the EU in its decisions, like flexicurity - policies on flexibility and security - to meet the challenges of globalisation.

She also insisted that the government needed to promote innovation and this should be ingrained in policies. Notary Coleiro Preca also called for an improvement in the industrial relations department so that law enforcement could be improved and workers could seek protection more easily.

Government speakers are being reported separately. The estimates were approved after a division, the opposition voting against.