On 3 February 1995, the inauguration of the new Malta Financial Services Centre was being celebrated at its spectacular building in Mriehel.

Bringing in the new financial services legislation had been the successful conclusion of, for once, bipartisan efforts. And in fact, everyone who was anyone was present for its launch at Mriehel.

That is until mobile phones started ringing and people rushed out of the building and jumped into their cars. A huge explosion had ripped apart a ship at Malta Drydocks and many workers had been killed or injured.

At the time nobody noticed the irony of the juxtapositioning of the two events, lost as we all were in the immense human tragedy.

Today, MFSA, as it is now known, celebrates its 10 years of success, while the victims of the Um el Faroud tragedy have not been remembered, except naturally by their own families as the loss of their loved ones is still keenly felt.

The two events that took place that evening represented two facets of Malta: on the one hand the new venture into financial services, then considered a daunting challenge for Malta, and on the other hand ship repair, which for centuries has been a mainstay of the Maltese economy, an area where Maltese skilled labour excelled in the past and still does.

Even then, as the tragedy, although accidental in nature, showed: the dangers inherent in anything to do with ships and with industrial processes were ever present and could never be underestimated.

Ten years on, it is useful to look again at the two ventures which the tragedy and the concomitance of the day has thrown together.

Over the past 10 years, the financial services sector has grown. Today the sector is a fully fledged industry in its own right, employs hundreds if not thousands of professionals, has attracted investment to Malta and, more importantly, has avoided the pitfalls into which it could very well have fallen.

Now that Malta is in the EU, our financial services sector is anchored on the bedrock of the EU legislation, thus gaining immensely in credibility and seriousness, something which would have been far more difficult and perhaps unattainable had Malta stayed outside the EU (in which case the temptation to become a rogue country would have been irresistible).

Over the past 10 years the dockyard has changed, too. The events of the past week and the concerns raised, have perhaps highlighted the tensions that still exist there, the mutual suspicions, perhaps an outmoded economic theory still based on the Marxist ploy of playing employer against employed.

The most significant change is that Malta today has developed various elements of economic activity, a huge improvement on the 1950s and 1960s when the dockyard absorbed practically all those who did not work for the government and where eventually, its declining dependence on the British Navy saw huge job losses that led to forced emigration and much heartache. Apart from financial services, we can today count industry, tourism, and possibly other areas where people are gainfully employed and contributing to the country’s well-being.

The dockyard has shrunk from the 26,000 employed at one point by the British colonial power to the 1,700 of today.

Juxtaposing the financial services sector to the dockyards sector may lead some to support financial services as the thing of the future and to downgrade ship repair as something of the dark past. It need not be so. It is true that shipyards all over the world have learnt to do more with less. It is true there is cutthroat competition between shipyards and owners take their ship repair work to those places where they can get the work done cheaper, on time and of certifiable standards. Ship repair, however, is a prime example of Maltese skilled labour and Malta would be poorer without it.

The dockyard and dockyard workers however must understand that we are living in a changing world and keeping the work practices and strict rigidity of the past will only end up in the dockyards having to be closed down. You cannot get work without committing to a time frame and keeping it, without offering a job at rates which are competitive, with industrial action which threatens to upset schedules down the line with reverberations all around the world. And the country, beset as it is with huge financial problems, cannot afford to have a dockyard which is not paying its way.

Now that the industrial action has been called off, there is a starting-point for negotiations. Threats, whether made by workers or the government, are a poor alternative to negotiations and a flexible approach to solutions. The dockyard is no longer a Crown dependence which can still exist whether it makes money or not. On the other hand, it is a pity that the government felt it had to take a front seat once again, with all its implications, and management hiding behind the government’s ample skirts.

Ten years ago the financial services sector was still a baby: it has now grown into a robust adult. Ten years ago, apart from the tragedy, the dockyard was stronger in human resources but weaker in financial terms. Today, it is weaker in human resources but stronger in potential.

The two issues mentioned; that of skilled people who wanted to leave and were held back, and that of foreign workers brought in on a temporary basis, can be solved if there is goodwill on both sides. But this paper’s impression, admittedly from somewhat afar, is that what bedevils everything at the dockyard is neither politics nor agitation, but simply lack of the basic rules of human relations.

May the memory of those who died 10 years ago help all to understand that every life is precious, every worker may have a valid point to make, and that after all the shouting, all must work together in what has become a far more difficult market, where one industrial dispute can jeopardise the very existence of the dockyard.