Outgoing Nationalist MP Jeffrey Pullicino Orlando will be reappointed to the chair of Malta’s science council if the Labour is elected to power, Joseph Muscat said yesterday.
Speaking to journalists after a visit to the Malta Council for Science and Technology premises at Villa Bighi, Kalkara, Dr Muscat described Dr Pullicino Orlando as “an ideal candidate” for the post.
“The MCST has not been politicised and has worked well over the past years. We should encourage this sense of continuity,” Dr Muscat said, with Dr Pullicino Orlando standing by his side.
When reminded of the acrimony between the two men in the run-up to the previous general election, the PL leader said they had both worked well together over the past five years and he had no problem extending their working relationship further.
Dr Muscat highlighted the PL’s desire to strengthen local patenting systems to better cater for high value-added manufacturing and the party’s proposals to entice entrepreneurs to invest in start-ups and research projects. Incentives would be rolled out for so-called “angel investors”, which Dr Muscat suggested would prick up the ears of cash-rich entrepreneurs eager to move out of traditional sectors such as construction. A Labour government would also work towards introducing a national venture capital fund, he added.
Dr Pullicino Orlando noted with satisfaction that the MCST now had four times as many staff members as it did when he first joined, while national funding had also increased fivefold.
But more investment was needed, he said. A national research and innovation fund received four times as many project applications as it could finance, meaning projects that could significantly better Malta’s quality of life often fell by the wayside.
MCST chief executive Nicholas Sammut explained how the council’s exponential growth had been matched by an equally-impressive increase in funding. For each new staff member employed, council funding rose by €500,000, he said.
Aside from financing various local research projects, from floating solar panels to medical stents that do not warp when twisted, the MCST also serves as Malta’s national contact point for pan-European research cooperation.
From the single research cooperation project, or “action”, undertaken in 2008, the MCST now coordinated 38 local actions in fields as diverse as lung diseases, string theory or desertification.
The next challenge, Dr Sammut said, was to further tap international research funds that were up for grabs. He encouraged politicians to turn to the MCST’s scientific expertise when considering national innovation challenges.
“We are ready to make a quantum leap forward,” Dr Sammut, a physicist by profession, said.