Don't lose their skills

Much has been said about the future of the shipyards. However, in this debate little attention has been given to preserving the many skills which the Malta Shipyards' workers possess.

I say this with my limited experience of the type of people the dockyards train and the demand for them. Two of my uncles used to work at the dockyard. They still use the skills and trades they learnt there.

Uncle Albert, my mum's elder brother, had to leave quite early in the 1950s after the initial rundowns by the British Royal Navy. He had to emigrate to Canada, then got married and settled down in the UK where he earned his living using the skills he had learnt all his working life.

Uncle Emmanuel, one of my dad's brothers, remained a dockyard employee until the 1970s when he took up a job as a technical maintenance manager with a local firm which exports overseas. Now, God bless him, well into his retirement, he still acts as a consultant for his former employers whenever they want to invest in new machinery.

These are the sort of skilled trades people which the dockyard, through its school, produced. This cadre was eventually utilized in the 1970s to set up the trade schools which, in turn, gave developing Malta the technical personnel so necessary to keep the machinery of our factories running.

When I was deputy chairman of the ETC and the HR development manager of the MDC I got first hand experience of the great need of Malta's industry to have skilled technical trades people who are the link between the shop-floor operators and the engineers to keep production flowing steadily. This is why, under the leadership of my friend and mentor, Tonio Portuguese, the ETC set up the Night Institute for Further Technical Education with the help of ORT Israel.

Later on in my professional life, I came once more face to face with the dockyard employees when they went through the 2003 downsizing.

As we all known, many were seconded, through the IPSL, to various government departments. In the education division they were re-deployed as caretakers in schools and the many skills which they had were not utilized at all. This was a sad loss and the result of crass shortsightedness.

During my time as an assistant head I was posted at the Sir Temi Zammit Boys' Secondary School, housed in the former naval hospital at Mtarfa. There is an old lift there which has been out of order for years and which some experts declared to be beyond repair. Thus, the education division has decided to eventually issue a tender to replace it. However, my ex-dockyard caretakers always insisted that if the division pooled all the dockyard employees of different trades seconded to it they were more than capable of taking on such challenging repair jobs. They assured me that they could make the lift at my former school work again.

The same applies to the hundreds of ex-dockyard employees spread throughout the other government departments and attached to local councils who now work as drivers, messengers and caretakers of sorts. The skills base which these people have has been practically lost forever.

The same can happen again if we are not careful how the forthcoming privatisation and downsizing are managed. The issue should not be only one of job security for the workers involved. This is a priority and it is their and their families' right to be given the peace of mind which they so rightly deserve and which was promised to them. However, then there is the national priority which relates to ensuring that the skills of these people which will not only contribute to our future as a maritime nation but also to other sectors of our economy are not lost forever.

It is the duty of the political class managing this privatisation to ensure that this does not happen and that the skills of the shipyards' employees are not lost forever.