For decades, a growing number of benefit abusers have registered for work with no real intention of finding a job. ETC chairman Clyde Caruana tells Ivan Martin “enough is enough”.

There were a few hundred people on the unemployed register who simply did not want to work, Mr Caruana said, shaking his head in disapproval. They have been getting away with it for years, living off benefits and trying their best not to get a job. This is about to change.

“Blue, red, whoever he or she is, if they don’t want to work they will be struck off the unemployment register and that means no benefits for at least six months,” Mr Caruana said.

How would these people make ends meet without State aid? That was their problem, was Mr Caruana’s quick reply.

“We’ve been hearing tough talk for years. But has anything happened? No. This has to change and we need to take action if the situation is to improve,” he insisted.

About 5,000 people are registered with the ETC, receiving thousands of euros in benefits for being jobless.

Asked how many of these were believed to be abusing the system, Mr Caruana paused for a moment and then said he believed 600 were refusing to work. But there had been tough talk before and governments threatening to stamp out abuse.

Mr Caruana, who assumed office in April 2014, is the first to admit that “talk is cheap”. He acknowledged that even abusers were not taking the warnings seriously after years of “empty threats”.

We have seen ETC become redundant,an institution that caters for losers

But the 30-year-old economist pointed out he had already set the wheels of change in motion. In the coming weeks, dozens of abusers would be given a formal warning and, in the following months, those who refused to work would see the benefits being stopped.

“I’m confident that most will regularise their position after this wake up call,” Mr Caruana said.

He said that, over the years, ETC had become “less of an employment agency and more of an unemployment one”.

“For decades, we have seen the ETC become redundant, an institution that caters for losers,” he said. Illustrating his point, Mr Caruana referred to the corporation’s youth employment programme.

Entitled the Youth Guarantee Scheme, the initiative is a training and employment programme for those aged between 16 and 24 which even gives applicants a €1,400 grant just for participating.

About 560 individuals enrolled after Mr Caruana made it compulsory for all registered unemployed youths to take part. But has it been a success?

“You can forget all 560 being employed. I’d say that if 40 per cent got a job, that would be a victory,” he said.

Unemployed youths required much more than a training programme and work profile to get them off the sofa and into the workplace.

The 18-month programme had seen hundreds of youths with severe social problems expected to fit into a workplace environment with close to no social skills or support. “For them, workplace behaviour is something alien. If I had to sum it up I would say they just don’t know how to conduct themselves in a normal society,” he said.

Mr Caruana said he had seen youths who assaulted employers, refused to shower before work and others who had sexually assaulted co-workers. And just as the workplace was alien to the troubled youths, so too was social work to employment officers. He said the ETC was not equipped to provide the youths with the support they needed. And, rather than turn to the government’s social workers for help, he had decided to take the matter into his own hands.

“These are people who have been let down by the country. For too long they have been marginalised and told they were on their own,” he said.

Mr Caruana said the new and improved youth scheme would be launched early next year and a strong psychosocial element would be provided through a public-private partnership.

Despite this, Mr Caruana still had reservations over what could really be done to help such youths.

“We will save some youths this way but not all of them. You have to catch them when they’re still young and help them navigate their problems. For most of those over 20 it’s already too late,” he said. The same was true of the long-term unemployed. However, rather than train such workers, Mr Caruana said the entity would be subsidising their wages to encourage employers.

He said he wanted to refocus the ETC, turning it into a place aimed at helping those already in employment who wanted to improve their career prospects.

“Most of the queries I receive are not from unemployed people but from people who want help moving up the ladder,” he said.

How does he hope to address this?

Mr Caruana said a state-of-the-art ‘job matching software’ was being developed and would be rolled out next year. Users would input their skills, interests and qualifications and be paired with potential jobs in real time.

For instance, Mr Caruana said, an applicant could consider himself/herself an economist but this software could match her/him with jobs s/he would have never dreamed of applying for. “This is the future of this entity, a jobs broker,” he said.

Explaining public sector jobs v. the jobless

Public sector employment does not account for the drop in the number of jobless, according to the head of the Employment and Training Corporation.

ETC chairman Clyde Caruana said that while unemployment figures had steadily dropped since 2013, the number of public sector jobs created had plateaued. “There is no direct link between these two,” he said.

Mr Caruana was reacting to criticism by the Opposition that the government was hiring people in the public sector to give the impression that unemployment was dropping. This, the Opposition charged, also served the interests of government supporters.

While he would not delve into who landed government jobs, Mr Caruana said about 350 people had been employed with the State since the the new administration took over. That figure had plateaued several months ago while unemployment figures continued to drop.

Standing at below 5,000, Mr Caruana said projections indicated the figure would further drip to under 4,000 next year.

“As long as the economy continues to perform, unemployment would continue to decrease,” he said.