The Nationalist Party yesterday reiterated its call for a national strategy for employment.

Party deputy leader Mario de Marco said that although jobs were created in the first 11 months of the new legislature, the rate with which they were created did not meet the demand because unemployment was on the increase.

He said the situation was not alarming but figures showed that there were 600 more unemployed in 2013 when compared to the previous year.

There was a 23 per cent increase in those who had been registering as unemployed for more than a year, a five per cent rise in unemployment among those between 20 and 24 years and a nine per cent growth among those over 25.

He expressed concern about the redundancies planned by Arrow Pharm and said the government needed to develop a national jobs strategy in order to generate more opportunities.

It had not actually worked on the creation of new economic niches

Dr de Marco remarked that creating incentives to encourage women and pensioners to work was useless unless there were enough job opportuni-ties for them.

European Parliament election candidate Helga Ellul, former chief executive of Playmobil, noted that, although the government had announced a number of projects, it had not actually worked on the creation of new economic niches that would contribute towards job creation.

In reaction, the government said that the labour force survey showed that the employment rate in the third quarter of last year stood at 61.3 per cent as against 59.6 per cent a year earlier.

Also, Malta rose from seventh from last to 11th from last in the European employment rate league and the gap between the rate in Malta in contrast with that within Europe dropped from almost five per cent to three per cent.

The government said that, according to ETC figures, 2,262 full-time jobs were lost in the manufacturing industry under the previous administration. In contrast, there was an increase of 169 between March and August last year, the first six months of the new Labour government.