So, now it’s ‘foreigners are taking our jobs’
Evarist Bartolo has popped out to tell us that foreigners are taking our jobs. “Half of all new jobs being created” are taken by “foreigners”, he said in Cottonera today.
He also said that there are “18,000 foreigners” working in Malta.
Of course, he would choose Cottonera to say that.
Freedom of movement in the EU – what’s that? Bartolo, who is the minister of education, conveniently omitted to tell his audience how many jobs Maltese people are ‘taking from foreigners’ as they live and work all over the European Union and many other parts of the world.
There he goes, pandering to the closed-minded Labour diehard mentality of jobs belonging to the Maltese and being taken from us by foreigners.
Bartolo’s reasoning is totally skewed. He was there to speak about education. The gist of his argument was that Maltese young people need better education and training, not for their own sake and so that they can lead better lives, but so that they can get those jobs instead of foreigners.
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http://www.timesofmalta.com/articles/view/20140211/local/18000-foreign-workers-in-malta.506409#.UvqC_LCPIdU
Bartolo spoke at a consultation meeting in Cottonera, an event organised by the government that listens but spends more time speaking.
What sort of audience would that be? The kind who are ripe and ready to staff iGaming companies or flood the financial services industry?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=768h3Tz4Qik
Beat me to the punch!
To those people, someone from Zurrieq is a ‘foreigner’.
If only 4% of Maltese citizens work overseas, that’s 16k accounted for.
I can only note that within my extended “average” family the percentage is a lot higher than that.
Numpty.
Well when foreigners are more polite, professional, educated (and not just academically), competent and hard working than the unemployed Maltese Cottonera types it is no wonder they get the jobs.
As for Bartolo, he is being the typical right-winger that his party expects him to be. Vera liberali ta, qeghdin tbellhuna.
He should also remind his followers that “the foreigners” are paying taxes so they can receive their benefits and contributing to economic growth.
On a side note, by foreigners I assume he means Europeans not Maltese passport holders of Chinese or Russian origin, right?
The meaning of ‘Tragedy’
The Minister of Education was visiting his first co-ed school. The teacher asked him whether he would care to lead a discussion on the word “Tragedy”, so he asked the class to give him an example.
A little boy stood up, and said, “If my best friend, who lives on a farm, was playing in the field, and a tractor ran over him, and killed him, that would be a tragedy”.
“No,” said the Minister, ‘that wouldn’t be a tragedy: that would be an accident”.
A little girl raised her hand: “If the school bus had fifty boys and girls in it, and it drove over a cliff, killing everyone inside, that would be a tragedy”.
“I’m afraid not,” explained the Minister; “That is what we would call a great loss.”
The room went silent. No child volunteered.
The Minister’s eyes searched the room. “Can no one here give me an example of a tragedy?”
At the back of the room, a little hand went up, and a quiet voice said, “If a plane carrying you and the Prime Minister was struck by friendly fire and blown to smithereens, that would be a tragedy”.
“Magnificent!” exclaimed the Minister, “That’s right! And can you tell me why that would be tragedy?”
“Well,” said the quiet voice, “It has to be a tragedy, because it certainly wouldn’t be a great loss, and it probably wouldn’t be an accident.”
http://www.independent.com.mt/articles/2014-02-10/news/swiss-anti-immigration-vote-stirs-fears-in-europe-3923542016/
You just can’t trust those foreigners.
They are always up to no good.
Far be it for the minister for education to actually tell the people the harsh truth – that there are no jobs for people who are actually not capable of doing anything and not willing to learn.
And yet he fails to mention that quite a few i-gaming companies in Malta list knowledge of Norwegian, or whichever language of the country they hail from, as an requirement in their vacancies.
So it is, in the end, his own fault for not equipping the Maltese workforce with the skills they need and focussing on appeasing China, which is seeming less and less able to offer proper investment and jobs by the day.
They’re banking on Chinese assembly plants for solar panels. Didn’t. Muscat tell a motley crew of youngsters that manufacturing is their future?
Aye, that he did. I’d like to see how things are supposed work out on both counts, with the ‘Roadmap’ and all that.
So, is it only since last March have “foreigners” started taking our jobs? What was happening before?
And the Labour Opposition used to ridicule Dr. Gonzi for saying that the government had created 25,000 jobs in 5 years.
Now we have Dr. Muscat boasting that he has created 5,000 jobs in 9 months, but miskin, foreigners are taking them. What was impossible has just become easy.
Varist may like to have a good look around him.
He will find ‘foreigners’ in the construction industry and in other spheres doing menial jobs that our compatriots ever readily shun – even though they lack any particular skills or training which could possibly offer them better opportunities.
Some jobs definitely require gumption – which many of our young are not ready to engage in.
Our education minister said that since trade schools closed nothing has been opened to replace them. Has he forgotten MCAST and the Institute of Tourism Studies with all their range of courses?
That’s a BIG oversight.
Does he intend to re-open that socialist idea of a trade school from the Golden Years of Labour? Why doesn’t he invest instead in bettering our tourism education and other courses offered at MCAST?
Surely our government can come up with innovative ideas on how to motivate the young to go to work instead of creaming the system.
No, Evarist Bartolo did not forget MCAST – he actually addressed a seminar there just over a week ago.
He was telling us that the country will only offer courses on subjects that create readily employable persons and that courses will be restructured/removed accordingly.
So much for the hard fought pluralism in education brought about by the PN.
A greater shock came with Mario Vella (Malta Enterprise) who spoke about the comeback of textile industries and the great need for tool-makers and mould-makers in this country.
Back to the 70s, politicians, individuals, mentality, outlook and all.
I love ABBA.
A lot of these new jobs that Evarist Bartolo is talking about are in gaming, recruitment and customer care among others.
There are Maltese and non-Maltese employed in these companies according to their skills and qualifications.
How many qualified Maltese are there who are fluent in Swedish for example ?
Does Evarist Bartolo suggest that they employ a Maltese who is qualified but has very limited knowledge in the Swedish language ?
Being in the E.U, Maltese have the same opportunities as any non-Maltese and what he should be encouraging them to do is further educate themselves in order to compete.
From what he said though, its almost like he is telling them that it is unfair that foreign companies operating in Malta are not employing unskilled Maltese manual labourers.
Varist is so right! Those foreigners have taken all our jobs, including the prime minister’s, which has been taken over by an international conglomerate made up of China and Henley & Partners.
This is a very dangerous pronouncement indeed. I’ve seen the exact same thing happen on another small island.
In the long term the result is that those ‘natives’ (i.e. non-foreigners) who do not care to improve themselves just have another excuse as to why they cannot get a job.
Their sense of entitlement, just because they are ‘sons of the soil,’ increases without them feeling any responsibility to invest in their own education.
I rarely agree with Daphne but this is the worse minister in the current cabinet. He was all out for an invasion of illegal immigrants and enjoys diversity and he said clearly stated in the past that jobs should be given to these people. Now he is worried that new jobs are being taken by foreigners. I think he should decide on which side he is.
This problem can be solved by
1) Cutting social benefits for those who refuse to work (but then he has to face the other minister which we all know that she has a particular skill on how to tell people to take benefits from the state.
2) ETC should check on those businesses employing employees illegally. There are thousands of them mainly in the construction industry and hotels
3) Introduce fines for those parents who do not send children to school (fines should be paid directly from their benefits)
4) Learn from the past and do not make mistakes which the UK made in education in the last 30 years. He seems he has an obsession to repeat the UK failure in Malta…..
The ETC’s remit is to regulate employment.
Following up illegal employment could well mean more immigrants would be employed legally and would therefore be able to enjoy full employment rights.
Good. It can’t happen soon enough.
Bartolo should say;
1. How many foreigners were working in Malta a year ago
2. How many foreigners are working in Malta today
3. What category of work foreigners are in
4. If any of these categories normally employ Maltese, or still want to work in these categories
5. What is he doing so that categories in ‘4’
Don’t you think you are asking him to much :)
5. What is he doing so that categories in ‘4’ re-employ Maltese.
I brought my job with me, and created two more (which are taken by employees of Maltese companies – no idea of their nationality as I have no direct contact with them).
Many of these companies bring jobs and people to this country generating taxes that are collected and jobs for Maltese.
The PN gave those employees of companies registered with the FSA tax breaks of over half their income tax. (My company is not registered with the FSA.)
Evarist Bartolo is quite right. A lot of jobs are being taken by foreigners and it’s not because they are more polite, professional and educated than the Maltese as somebody in this blog commented.
It is a total shame that the previous administration, not only allowed but instigated this state of affairs, where thousands of foreigners including Eastern Europeans, who have no right to be working here, have invaded our shores.
One only needs to look at certain job vacancies being advertised on that sorry excuse for a newspaper ” the Times” .
In a lot of cases, they not only ask for Danish, Swedish, Norwegian etc., speaking people BUT for natives of these countries and several others. Need I say more !
[Daphne – People from the countries you mentioned have every right to live and work in Malta, just as you have every right to live and work in their countries. I gather you haven’t yet registered the fact that we joined the European Union in 2004. Norwegians have that right too, under other reciprocal agreements. It’s made Malta a whole lot more tolerable a place to be in.]