An issue as tired as it gets

A journalist friend once told me that a bad week in August is unlikely to inflict lasting damage to a government. Ditto, for a damning report. But this Nationalist government is so used to being constantly thrown on the defensive, not by Labour attacks, but by its own voluntary errors, that any bad week or bad report just slide off, whatever month of the year it may be.

In my last piece here I wrote about the phantom projects which have been appearing on PN election manifestos for decades, but which never materialise. Today I write about the mother of all these projects. Childcare... yawn.

The recent publication of an EU report on the provision of childcare exposes again the PN's incompetence in this area as well. How tired is this issue? Tired enough to put many of us to sleep. And yet, after decades of talk, we are still grappling with the problem - a problem which affects our productivity, both in the economic and biological sense. It puts women in a position where we have to choose between paid work and having children, and which makes the country lose out on the investment made in human resources.

The report is clear about the Maltese rhetoric on childcare: "There have been several statements from governments over the years about what they see as the crucial importance of national childcare for the well-being of children and gender equality, in particular. However, to date, there has been no attempt to discuss or design a national policy for childcare services".

Rewind 13 years or so. The Labour government of 1996 had embarked on a multi-pronged approach vis-à-vis childcare. In the span of some months a pilot childcare project was launched with a local council and work was underway with other councils. The same was being done with government departments and various quangos. The Industrial Development Act was amended to include incentives to entrepreneurs to set up childcare centres on their business premises. Groundwork was prepared for a childcare cooperative to be established. Childcare regulations were drafted. But because the legislature was short-lived, these regulations were not passed through Parliament and they were laid to rest on some CD with the change of government. In fact the latest EU report states that "Malta is still without a legal framework that regulates childcare centres" up to this day. The same goes for all the aforementioned initiatives which were buried by the following Nationalist governments.

Even a childcare centre at Air Malta, officially opened by former minister Josef Bonnici with much fanfare, was never made available to the employees' children. The doors were opened once - for the official opening, never to be opened again.

Last time I quoted MP Jesmond Mugliett saying that there was no continuity from one administration to the next. He was referring to consecutive Nationalist governments. I guess one shouldn't be surprised then that a Nationalist government discontinued the work of a Labour government.

Nevertheless, we continue to worry that Malta has the lowest figure for women's participation in the labour force in the whole of the European Union, pointed out again in this childcare provision report. Setting aside the fact that many women over 40 do not work - even though no longer restricted by young children - a major problem for younger women who are raising children while trying to stay in paid work is this lack of childcare facilities and family-friendly policies in the workplace.

The government then speaks about - but unlike some other countries, fails to address - the reality that our fertility rate keeps dropping as women continue postponing having children, for economic reasons, among other things. These women usually then end up having just one child, if they manage to conceive at all.

We can also carry on mentioning the pay gap between women and men until we are blue in the face. Women with young children have to take time out to look after them; grandmothers able and willing to babysit will soon become a rare breed. The gender pay gap is mainly a childcare pay gap. It is generally women who take on the responsibility to care for children and are constrained to take career breaks to raise them, and this manifests itself as lower pay for women on average. There is rarely a gender pay gap for childless women.

Not very difficult to understand. But then logic never really comes into these discussions, does it? If it were not so, the government would not continue to put this important childcare matter - critical for an increase in national productivity and better return for our investment in education and training - on the backburner.

Dr Dalli is a Labour member of Parliament.