Among my many duties as a parliamentarian, I cherish the occasions when I am called upon to represent my country at international fora discussing issues that are most relevant to our own people, and particularly when I can share the achievements accomplished by our government and receive the appreciation of the delegates from other countries.
It is indeed a great satisfaction to address the people's representatives from so many countries and, rather than getting the ritual applause, Malta's own achievements are fully endorsed - with numerous delegates stating that our strategies are "crucial and need to be followed very closely".
This week I led a parliamentary delegation to the 45th British Isles and Mediterranean Regional Conference of the Commonwealth Parliamentary Association, held in Cyprus. Our agenda included discussing unemployment in various sectors of the population, in particular women, people with disability and the younger generation. It was my honour to report on the way our government has targeted vulnerable groups through new measures to encourage economic growth with a range of new initiatives ranging from a reduction in bureaucracy to fixed packages.
With regard to women, we have introduced free childcare for all families in order to enable women to access the labour market. This was enhanced with further initiatives, such as the in-work benefit and the tapering off of employment benefits - spread over three years. It also included the breakfast clubs and after-school hours training to have the skills set. Our philosophy has been to be practical, with clear-cut measures that encourage women to adapt to - or re-embrace - a career while being helped to continue with their family responsibilities.
As expected, people with a disability are very much at the heart of my portfolio. We have created new schemes for them and new initiatives and have upgraded the existing ones to the widest extent possible. The government's budget for this current year offered a strong and encouraging package. Just to mention some of the measures, we have removed the capping of income for these people so that no matter how much they earn, they will retain their disability pension. We also encouraged employers who already employ people with a disability - and prospective employers - by giving them a tax credit for each and every such person they employ or will employ, together with exemption from the employers' National Insurance contributions. It was a leap forward when we also enforced legislation dating back to 1969 that stipulates that people with a disability must account for a minimum of two per cent of any organisation's workforce.
In line with this, we introduced a contribution for each and every person with disability that should be employed by virtue of this "People with Disability Employment Act". It was noted with regret that, over the years, this proviso has never really been enforced and we bravely moved on to ensure that it actually works and are already witnessing not only a notable improvement but also a change in mentality.
With regard to young people, we have been constantly tackling the subject of early school-leavers. Applying the youth guarantee, as is done in several other EU countries, is aimed at giving unemployed young people the opportunity to become employable through a vast choice of training programmes in order that they will obtain the skills required so that they can stand on their own two feet. While guaranteeing a secure job, their collaboration and adherence will not involve the removal of any unemployment benefits, provided they demonstrate their intention to move forward, rather than stay idle and be complacent with perpetual state aid!
Our Commonwealth colleagues at the Limassol conference showed interest in our specific programmes for vulnerable people, aimed at getting them out of the situation of being passive recipients of help. Everyone agreed that this is the way forward to empower such people to access employment.
Our rationale is based on our best asset: the human capital. We plan and incessantly move along fruitful inter-ministerial cooperation. We will proceed to rigorously follow an education strategy, hence the prevention of early school leavers, lifelong learning schemes, new skills for new jobs, green jobs and digital jobs and nurturing more entrepreneurial skills.
I also stressed the need to attract more people to the caring for the elderly sector, since we lack the required human resources to sustain our services. Indeed, there was agreement across the board about this shortage but I stressed the fact that we are increasing training opportunities by organising two courses a year for prospective care workers and also ensuring that all new government contracts for care-workers include new conditions to ensure that employees' rights are safeguarded and hourly rates increased. In fact we have already introduced these measures in two of our new contracts and will continue to do so with each and every new contract. These measures are also conducive to attracting more people to seek employment in the sector.
It was indeed a privilege for me to report to and share with parliamentarians from around the Commonwealth all the positive results achieved in the first two years of Malta's Labour government. They were utterly impressed and, as a Maltese, I felt really proud that our endeavours were being praised at international level. Obviously, there is more to be done but we are certainly walking the walk and talking the talk - and the results are showing.
Dr Caruana is the Parliamentary Secretary for the Rights of People with Disability and Active Ageing