Noel Grima

A tracer study conducted by the ETC has shown that most of the people who were affected by massive job losses in some manufacturing concerns have found other work within months of losing their jobs, mainly textile manufacturing.

Lloyds Shoes

Denim Services Ltd

Denim Sports Wear Ltd

Interprint Ltd

This could be the future for the around 700 workers who lost their jobs recently at the two big manufacturing concerns, VF and Bortex. ETC is now working hard to help these employees.

VF

In one week ETC completed 250 detailed profiles of the people affected by redundancies at VF. Each profiling exercise takes around one hour.

The 250 people have already applied for 340 courses that will be starting soon. These include basic computer competencies, courses for Care Workers, Call Centre Operators, and retailing and food handling among others.

The ETC has set up a Mini Job-Centre at the VF premises, with the full cooperation of the employer, to inform VF employees every day about job vacancies that arise. During the last week employees have been encouraged to apply and attend interviews for a large number of jobs.

There are seven ETC staff every day at VF conducting profiling and/ or assisting the employees to prepare themselves for when they officially become redundant.

Apart from the above, all employees have been sent a kind of consent form so that the government will make arrangements on their behalf regarding their bank loans. Each employee will send the form individually to the Ministry of Finance.

Bortex

The same process – profiling the employees’ aptitudes and skills, started on Thursday and is expected to take another week before it is completed.

In both cases, various employers have informed ETC that they will take on some of these employees. The ETC has a special scheme through which a company that employs any of the employees made redundant receives half the minimum wage for the duration of 13 weeks.

In both cases clients will also be informed that should they opt for a course the ETC does not organise, it will reimburse up to Lm200 if such course is in line with one’s work preference.

One must also point out that most of the people urgently required by Lufthansa Technik for its expansion next year do not need to be engineers with university qualifications but, as explained recently by this newspaper, adequate technical skill with tools, an aptitude for learning and a willingness to work are enough. Such people are urged to take on the proper MCAST courses leading to jobs in the aircraft repair industry.