Jahasra! Ikollhom jemigraw minn Ghawdex lejn Malta
I really struggle to understand the world view of some people.
Where in heaven’s name did they get the idea that the jobs should come in search of you rather than you going in search of the jobs?
And what sort of person demands that employers should move to Gozo, there to suffer major inconvenience and create higher costs and inefficiencies which are passed on to their customers, losing them business, just so somebody who is stuck to Nadur’s umbilical cord doesn’t have to move to commute or get a place on the bigger and – let’s face it – far more interesting island.
Labour MP Justyne Caruana, speaking yesterday and quoted in The Malta Independent today:
The employment problem is far more acute than it is in Malta, and it is not acceptable that after studying Gozitan students do not get the opportunity to earn an equal pay in Gozo. They are forced to leave family and move to Malta, when we are focusing on the importance of family
We joined the European Union so that, unlike my generation, they would have the freedom of living and working anywhere they want to in Europe, and they won’t even work in Malta because they live in Gozo.
That mentality is a PROBLEM, Justyne. It is a sign of backwardness. It is the opposite of progressive. You, in the Labour Party, should not be justifying it, promoting it, or encouraging it.
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Here we part company, Daphne. “Gozo is special” is a cornerstone of PN policy, not just MLP’s. That backwardness has been consecrated and is now set in stone.
[Daphne – The one does it for votes and the other actually means it. And quite frankly, I don’t know which is worse. The more they do this, the more of a problem, not less, it will become. It is natural progress for people to move from the outlying islands to the mainland. If that were not the case, Pantelleria and Lampedusa would be like Malta, but they are not.]
PN does it for votes and means it too. I know it for a fact.
And it can only get worse, now that Gozo has been declared a region, for the purpose of wrangling a few measly EU regional funds and securing a few more Gozitan votes.
It goes against the whole spirit of our EU membership and finding our natural place in “id-dar taghna l-Ewropa”, but a party is only as good as its leaders, and PN’s leaders are Maltese to the core, with all the backwardness and earnest Sicilianness that goes with it.
They’ve even increased Gozitan (excuse me? Is there such a thing as “Gozitan”?) students’ stipends, for god knows what reason.
Presumably so they can live in uncle Anton’s Msida flat AND pop over to Gozo to visit their parents on weekends, while pocketing a few extra Euros. How stupid is that?
“Incentivising” “Gozitans” on the premise that they have a lower GDP per capita (in Gozo) when half of them live, work and spend their money in Malta (the island of Malta. God this is tiring).
Then you’re greeted by the usual bollocks Powerpoint about Gozo’s “special character”. Yes, all right, we got that. Special sense of entitlement more like.
Lets get it over with – Build the damned BRIDGE .
Oh I forgot , what about some statistics of money , vat and taxes as per capita Malta vs Gozo .
The PM doesn’t want a bridge, ghax hekk. He wants a tunnel. So tunnel it is.
Barra minn hekk, jekk jitla’ x-xoghol hemmhekk, Ghawdex jispicca replica ta Malta. Ma tibqax il-gzira agrikola u rurali izda tigi industrijalizzata. Keku l-Gvern ghamel kif qed jipproponu huma, kieku kien jaqlaghha xorta minn ghandhom li qed jeradikaw il-kampanja Ghawdxija.
She has competition.
“No incentive has been proposed to attract knowledge-based firms or other high value added jobs. The 60 per cent tax credit for Gozitan SMEs and the 50 per cent wage funding for the first year under the employment aid scheme, compared to 40 per cent and 25 per cent respectively in Malta, have helped but definitely not been enough to stop the continuous haemorrhage of our younger generations to seek employment in Malta or overseas.”
http://www.timesofmalta.com/articles/…/An-island-that-is-forgotten.396172
If your reasoning is applied to all peripheral localities, then it should also be applied to Malta in general.
Which foreign employers would consider investing in Malta, when ancillary costs of moving to a small rock lacking most primary and secondary resources cause them “to suffer major inconvenience and create higher costs and inefficiencies which are passed on to their customers”?
What do politicians mean when they say that they want to attract foreign investment to the Island? If they mean what they say, then your criticism of Dr Caruana seems flawed to me.
[Daphne – Bollocks. The inconveniences in Gozo are due to its being a ferry-ride away from the commercial centre. Commercial centres grow organically. You can’t force them into being. You may have failed to notice, but there is nothing much going on in Mellieha either, and people who live in Mellieha generally drive for 45 minutes every morning to the COMMERCIAL CENTRE. They don’t lobby the government to make megiks in Mellieha. You may have failed to notice, too, that Malta has moved away from manufacturing and that the new money is all from financial services, software development, gaming and other IT/internet related high-value-added services. In that respect, Malta is not cut off at all, because our IT infrastructure and laws are pretty good, and that’s why people are moving in. Yes, strictly speaking they can operate in Gozo but here’s the thing you forget: their employees don’t want to work there. When it’s so damned tough to attract the right people, you don’t go off and make your operation unattractive to them by moving it to Gozo. Here’s what you and Justyne Caruana overlook, conveniently: most people live in Malta. If a business moves to Gozo, it can’t operate by employing only people who live there, so it’s going to inconvenience its existing employees who live in Malta, and above all, won’t find the new employees it needs – who live in Malta – because people in Malta are spoiled for choice, and they’re not going to take a job in Gozo just so that Justyne’s little friends can keep theirs.]
This is a good point. In my work I come across this type of investor (well actually I just meet their representatives down the line!) .
And it is true, many wouldn’t believe it, but especially in the gaming and financial services world they ask you about the history places, the clubbing scene, the health clinics….and a quite general ‘what’s there to do in the evening?.”
So it puts Gozo – which is beautiful, mind you – in its own perspective.
The main problem here is that people are far too molly-coddled. Had they studied abroad, rather than in Malta, then they would probably have thought nothing of travelling a couple of hours each way, every day, to get to and from university. (And going home to cook, clean and wash their own clothes, unlike most university students here.)
Justyne Caruana should lobby for all EU bodies to be relocated to Malta (or maybe Gozo) so all Maltese (and Gozitan) expats like me can come back and enjoy the sunshine.
Justyne just wants her voice to be heared – just like that chap Mercieca – all in the good cause of the next elections
Last week, Justyne Caruanasent my son (a university student with a Gozo ID card) a letterexplaining how hard she is working to see that jobs are brought over to Gozo and how more university courses should be held in Gozo.
Funnily enough, though, hard as I looked, there was absolutely nothing to indicate that she is from the Labour Party. Why are they all so ashamed of their own party?
Jiena dejjem xtaqt inkun naf ghalfejn dawk l-Ghawdxin li jahdmu Malta jibqghu joqghodu Ghawdex specjalment dawk li jiddeciedu li jkollhom dar taghhom minhabba. zwieg.
Justyne wahda minnhom anke jew zewgha Malti – hemm baqghet toqghod.
Nifhem li Ghawdex ghand xi haga specjali imma l-kumdita’ tigi qabel kollox.
Trid tkun taf ghaliex? Easy! Il-perks! Il-beneficcji! Is-sussidji! Ir-rati mnaqqsa!
Gozo is a big myth that’s been swallowed hook, line and sinker by PN, who always had a soft spot for that most Maltese corner of idyllic Malta. Familja. Valuri Nsara. Poplu hawtieli u biezel. Poplu dhuli. And all the rest of the Christian Democrat cant.
And Tyrell’s pastoral idyll featuring goats and chickens.
Are we speaking about the same Gozo, home of the black economy ?