The art of the possible

If there is one thing the Nationalist government can be commended for surely it is the healthy environment it has created to attract foreign and local investment so vital to generate jobs. All over Europe, and beyond, workers are being fired right, left and centre but, in these last four years, 20,000 new jobs have been created in Malta.

Job creation and education go hand in hand. Aware that our only natural resource is the human kind, the Nationalist government has always placed education on top of its agenda. To guarantee a better future for our children, the government invests €6,000 every year per child and €23 million annually in stipends to over 18,500 students in order to encourage our children to continue studying.

Gozitan students receive a further €4,000 every three months. Also, since 2010, scholarships have been granted to some1,500 youths to help them specialise.

Today, teachers have been provided with a laptop and classes are fully equipped with computers and over 2,300 interactive whiteboards.

Since 2008, four new schools, 160 laboratories and eight childcare centres have been built.

Thanks to the government’s inclusive education policy, Malta has the lowest rate of children attending special schools. To be able to achieve such a record, the government introduced 32 learning support zones and nurture groups, which look after over 600 children who have different needs, and also learning support assistants to help about 3,250 children.

Since 2009, the percentage of students continuing tertiary education rose from 43 per cent to 47 per cent and Malta boasts of five per cent high-flyers, one of the highest percentages in Europe.

The University has seen the introduction of 10 new faculties and over 200 new courses have been introduced, reaching a total of 700 courses that students can choose from. There is also, of course, The University of the Third Age.

All this and more costs our national coffers a daily €1.4 million but instead of playing tango and emphasising the importance of this investment and of tertiary education, the Labour leader has recently promised to guarantee school leavers (16-year-olds) a job. What a defeatist mentality!

Is Joseph Muscat aware that it is minimising the importance of post-secondary education by enticing 16-year-olds to abandon their studies? Furthermore, what quality jobs will he be offering to the unskilled? Perhaps he is planning on reintroducing the military labour corps, so popular in Labour’s heydays! For crying out loud, do we have to put up with such balderdash! Our children deserve much better.

A testimonial on social media reminded me of Labour’s forma mentis on tertiary education. “In 1983, I finished school and tried getting into Malta University to study medicine but, notwithstanding my top A level grades, I was refused entry for political reasons. (My family, as many other thousands, was blacklisted by Mintoff’s socialist government. The University Selection Board was presided by Alfred Sant…)” (www.zamm.it/story.htm).

The infamous imposition of numerus clausus on University entrance must surely be the worst thing Labour ever did for our children. In those prehistoric days under the student-worker system, unless students had a sponsor, or better still a “godfather”, they were unceremoniously forbidden from stepping onto campus. No wonder the University population exploded from 800 under Labour to 11,300 under the PN.

Labour had also closed down the Malta College of Arts, Science and Technology, which was immediately reopened by the Nationalist government. Today, Mcast hosts over 6,000 students.

Where would all these students be under Labour?

Labour had also said no to Church schools. Imagine any government coping with an extra 17,000 students attending state schools! Later, Labour Prime Minister Alfred Sant decided to introduce a repeaters’ class and transform student stipends into loans.

Under the PN, stipends were once again granted to students with no strings attached and, happily, in the last four years over 20,000 of our students graduated from the University and Mcast.

The government did not stop there. It took measures to introduce ongoing training to workers that is of vital importance in this day and age when what is ok now is an anachronism tomorrow.

Since 2008, apart from organising over 3,636 courses, the Employment and Training Corporation, contributing to Malta’s employment record, which is among the best in Europe, has found jobs for over 15,000 workers.

The International Monetary Fund revealed that the Maltese economy grew by 1.5 per cent since 2007 while most other countries have seen their economy contract by two per cent. The report also called Malta’s economic growth and financial sustainability effort “impressive” and showed that competitiveness is improving while inflation remained below the EU average (May 7) and all this during a world recession!

A Labour MP recently wrote: “Blaming Joseph Muscat for it all (assumingly referring to the government’s shortcomings) simply because he has not yet published his manifesto is an insult to one’s intelligence” (May 16).

Since when does an electoral manifesto belong to a person and not a political party? Has Labour become a one-man show?

If so, what on earth has Dr Muscat been doing for four whole years? Surely promising the impossible to all and sundry, setting one’s house in order or moving no confidence motions in Parliament should not have taken precedence over all else.

And, yet, in spite of Dr Muscat’s Sunday blabber he still refuses to tell us how he intends to achieve the impossible. And that is the greatest insult to us all.