Skilling & upskilling – impact on Malta’s economic growth
I must highlight another important issue, that certain sectors are finding it difficult to employ people for particular jobs especially locally.
Recently everyone has been discussing our country’s economic growth. Unfortunately, COVID -19 has contributed negatively to economic growth – not only in Malta but worldwide.
Having said this, skilling and upskilling play a big part in this growth. The European Commission’s Semester report has reported certain issues facing Malta’s economic sustainability, one of which is education.
This report shows that during the past years, we had the highest employment growth rates amongst all EU countries. The country has seen a high level of early school leavers, and this has resulted in people having poor or not enough education to find a decent job. The government has been tackling this issue, and is now implementing more measures to encourage students to keep attending school after compulsory level. These measures will surely help a lot in enhancing economic growth.
I must highlight another important issue, that certain sectors are finding it difficult to employ people for particular jobs especially locally.
Unfortunately, this leads to the employment of third country nationals. However, this comes with a long and hectic employment procedure for the company. Coming from a Human Resources background, I strongly suggest that Government starts to promote more these particular sectors such as aviation technicians and other similar specific jobs, instead of the current promotion to the leading sectors such as financial, audit, etc.
I believe that to motivate and encourage more students to continue on the educational journey, the government needs to reinstate more trade schools like we had in the past that offer a wide selection of trades.
Only then would students have the opportunity to try multiple trades and choose their best fit. This will automatically contribute to the country’s economy because those youths who are not inclined towards traditional education can opt for courses that treat a particular trade that interests them. It is very evident that manual labour is decreasing and some sectors are almost on the verge of extinction. This is due to the fact that as a society we are pressuring youths to aim for high level of education jobs, because nowadays society presses forward the mentality of having the best lifestyle, the best house and a very good income.
I would like to close this article by mentioning one last important issue in this regard. Pensioners can also contribute to economic growth. The Government has started introducing incentives for the people in this age bracket by introducing benefits for people who retire to keep on working.
However, the only problem I see is that not everyone can continue doing the same type of work after retiring and this is due to many different reasons. In this regard, I strongly believe that one should consider a strategic plan for this issue, such as by giving free training to these people on certain jobs.