Investment, Industry and Information Technology Minister Austin Gatt was full of praise for the Maltese worker when he spoke yesterday at the third annual award ceremony of the Ericsson awards of excellence in telecommunications. “The ladies and gentlemen being recognised today by Ericsson are receiving a nod from one of the most reputed brands in this business world-wide. This episode – as with several others – confirms that our people deliver world-class work, reaching world-class standards. There is no small pond in this globalised lake: there are only small fish and big fish and we must continue to grow to compete and survive, Dr Gatt said.

Malta’s most visible success and the foundation on which all other successes rested was to have persuaded global players to want to associate themselves with us; to find in Malta not simply a market in proportion to its size and custom but “to find, rather a basis of operation, a source of excellent human resources, a business partner, a development laboratory, a meeting place, a locus of networks across continents and cultures.”

But, he added, Malta was not always an ICT centre of excellence; it did not always have specialised training opportunities for its young people. “We have sold the idea of Malta as an ICT centre of excellence when it was still a dream, a vision that some dismissed as flashy pictures put together in a rush. Our ambitious programmes for the future tend to meet that sort of reaction by the sceptics among us. I suppose it is why they are always stuck in the career rut they have been in for 20 years.”

The onset of Malta’s information society did not happen on its own. It happened because “we dared to be ambitious for our people and because our people lived up to that ambition in ways that surprises everyone but us,” he said.