A culture change could be the only way to attract more youngsters to the manufacturing industry, Education Minister Evarist Bartolo said yesterday.
Speaking during a visit to Playmobil’s Ħal Far factory, Mr Bartolo said he hoped new educational programmes being introduced would help change the view many young people had of the maligned industry.
“This is not a Charles Dickens novel. Manufacturing isn’t the nightmarish workplace that many youths think it is,” Mr Bartolo said, referring to comments made by company CEO Matthias Fauser, who urged more young people to consider joining the industry.
Mr Bartolo announced a number of incentives that would be made available to Gozitan secondary schools at the start of this scholastic year.
These include the restructuring of the Personal Social Development subject, which, he said, would have more career development courses.
He said that the popular UK-based B-tech vocational courses offered at Maltese secondary schools would be replaced by home-grown courses to suit the local industry.
The minister’s visit comes on the back of a similar visit by Prime Minister Joseph Muscat last month.
Dr Muscat had insisted that a greater effort had to be made to provide the manufacturing industry with enough skilled workers.
“Manufacturing is the future just like the financial services sector and gaming,” Dr Muscat had said.
On that occasion, Mr Fauser called on the Prime Minister to invest in more programmes to entice youths to the industry.
The German toymakers employ more than 1,000 skilled workers at the Ħal Far assembly lines with a further 500 who work from home, making them among the island’s biggest employers.
Mr Bartolo said: “This is a company that fills three trailers every week with locally-produced goods. We recognise the need to invest here.”
The company recently invested about €15 million of its own funds to upgrade its state-of-the art equipment and retrain several employees.
Speaking in the factory’s moulding room, where new toy casts are tried and tested, Mr Fauser said that as many as 99 per cent of employees received regular training, with several visiting the company’s base in Germany to receive specialised development.
“There is room for growth here. Some might think that it’s a dead end but the reality is that you can make better money here than in many other industries and there is upward mobility too,” Mr Fauser said.