No one said that, Baxxter. And if I did not explain myself clearly, I apologise.

We will always have people with no tertiary education or who are inclined to do manual jobs rather than sit behind a desk. There is quite a big chunk of people in Malta who are happy working in the manufacturing sector.

In an office one needs someone to do the errands and the cleaning. In industry one still has to have managers, accountants, engineers, tool makers, technicians, and machinists to run a factory.

No one is asking for special treatment – these workers pay taxes like everyone (and even more than some academics who represent us in parliament) and inject much needed hard cash into the country’s economy with what they export.

John Schembri, this is turning out to be another impossible conversation.

The way you put it, the prime minister should provide jobs to match all the skills of every Maltese citizen. That means we should have things like a national ballet company, a national nuclear programme, an Olympic bobsleigh team, and a national Bio-Safey Level IV laboratory where smallpox samples are kept for research.

You go ahead and pay for all this, John.

…. Jahdmu n-nar …….

H.P Baxxter,

I voted for the EU for freedom of movement and for a better quality of life among other things.

Maltese workers have a right to work where they want in Europe.The way you put it is that whoever wants to work in the manufacturing industry has to leave his homeland if he doesn’t find a job.

Every country should have a manufacturing sector like Germany not in size but in the same ratio if possible. Governments have to provide work for everybody ; the academics and the blue collared.

Presently the other ‘career opportunities’ which MCAST students have are with the Maltese owned family businesses which don’t pay and have quasi medieval working conditions.

What the colonialists thought about us is not valid. They put their imperialist interests first, not yours, that leaves you looking from the wrong angle.

What Muscat said inter alia, was that apart from the gaming industry, nursing , catering and jobs in the tertiary sector there are opportunities for students to take up in the manufacturing sector like mould making and tooling which by the way are the nadir of precision engineering : a well paid specialised job and not only at Playmobil.

Muscat was right on this one, and I hope the PN understands and agrees with his opinion.

John Schembri, I don’t have Daphne’s patience, so I will keep my answer short.

1. You say that Malta should have a manufacturing sector “like Germany”. What an unbelievably stupid comparison. Malta and Germany are worlds apart.

2. Both the PN and Labour have their economic policies fundamentally wrong. They try to fit economic sectors to available workforce, when it should be the other way round. You could do it in a Mintoffian-type economy, of course, which is where most of our economist gurus were schooled. But you cannot do it in a free economy where the government has no control over private industry. Hence the total panic when ST Microelectronics was about to shut down its Malta factory and set up shop elsewhere.

In a free economy, you train your workforce so they can find jobs. And the jobs IN MALTA are not in manufacturing.

3. There is a way to reconcile your views and mine. Encourage EMIGRATION. After all, that is why we joined the European Union. Leastaways, that is why I wanted to join it. Maltese workers who wish to work in manufacturing can go to Germany. Malta has always been a country of emigration, at least for the last two hundred years when it really got overcrowded. The British administration knew it, and they tailored their policies accordingly.

Not the modern Maltese. They cling to this tiny speck of rock as if it were their only lifeline. If you can’t find a job in Malta, pack up and leave. Or retrain as a programmer, and stay put.

From the way you write, I know it was your own skills, not the University of Malta, that made you successful.

Now also the facility in Tunisia has shut shop and moved to points east – Asia. Where does our PM see openings for minimum wage jobs in manufacturing? ST, where even engineers are apprehensive about holding on to their jobs with ST in a permanent state of “shall I stay or shall I go”.

This is not the 70s with denim and jeans factories employing illiterate school-leavers at minimum wage under slave-labour conditions. Or does he have the resuscitation of the “Korpi ‘ in mind? I weep for the future of Malta, if it does have a future under these people.

I second Daphne. I received my first degree from the University of Malta and then went to a top UK university for my PhD.

I was much better prepared for this than most of the others from other universities.

The degree in Malta gave me the necessary technical knowledge as well as the tools necessary to also handle gaining new knowledge independently and use it successfully. I cannot stress how important the second part of this is.

High value manufacturing (whatever that means) was identified by MCAST under the previous administration as one of four streams onto which to focus innovation.

I guess a balanced approach would work, affording some space for niche engineering / manufacturing in addition to tourism, financial services etc.

There’s all of the European Union too.