Cabinet reconvenes this morning after a break of a few weeks. The Nationalist Party Executive Committee meets again this evening. The prime minister and most ministers have had their deserved holiday, even if more often than not the duration was kept to a bare minimum and contact with the office is never severed.
It’s the end of August and while Parliament does not convene for another month and school holidays are not yet over, September is always the month when the government’s agenda fills up again and it gets rather busy for all concerned.
In September, the Nationalist Party organises its largest mass encounter with the people through the Independence Day celebrations. The day and age when mass meetings would be held monthly or even weekly is a relic from history not least because the party in government has, some would argue, at its own peril, managed to normalise life in our country and politics is no longer the exclusive subject matter to refer to in everyday conversation.
A stock taking exercise of the present state of affairs is in order. As expected, Malta is feeling the brunt of the international recession. We do not live in isolation and when countries such as the UK have been hard hit by one crisis after another, we are bound to suffer especially in two areas that affect our daily bread and butter – tourism and manufacture.
Summer is the season when the tourism industry needs to provide itself and the national economy the needed oxygen to face the more difficult winter months. Those operators who did not manage to receive their annual bout of oxygen will find surviving in the coming months a more strenuous and challenging task.
One immediate impact that the country is already experiencing is the number of persons pertaining to different age groups who are finding it difficult to find suitable employment. If the political surgery regularly carried out by me – even during the hot summer months – is a symptomatic gauge, I can report that there are more people than usual seeking jobs and more often than not remaining short of the income that they require for their own and for their families’ sake.
News that Germany and France have already pulled out of the recession is, on the other hand, welcome. Germany in particular is our second most important supplier of tourists and its economic performance is of particular significance to our manufacturing scene. Still employment figures take longer to pick up and when jobs are shed in any country, Malta included, recovery does not automatically lead to persons regaining the work that they would have lost.
Job creation and job security must rank at the very top of the government’s agenda. I am confident that this will be the guiding principle as the government spends the coming month fine tuning next year’s Budget. The national economy cannot be merely measured in terms of what deficit level we manage to achieve, as it needs to be also a reflection of employment levels, participation rate, standard of living and other measurements that establish to what extent people’s needs and aspirations are being met.
Adding momentum to various projects that have been announced and launching others is one of the keys to job creation and therefore to the economic growth that we aspire for. Projects also mean that different aspects of the national product would be further addressed and that in turn has a positive impact on tourism and on our way of life.
In the coming weeks we need to see works commencing on the Valletta Entrance / Freedom Square / Opera House ruins project. We have waited for 67 years – the time to move ahead is now.
Equally the pace of reform on different administrative fronts cannot be compromised. After seeing to rent reform and improving the way local councils operate – to mention two highlights of the past months – other reforms in the pipeline, not least to radically reform the way public transport functions in Malta are imminent. There will always be elements who prefer to dissent since they are content with the status quo, and worse still there will be others, including the opposition, who prefer to sit on the fence and simply gloat that the government would have to bear the brunt on its own. It is a short sighted strategy since ultimately the credit must go towards those who have the conviction and courage to see through reforms from the word ‘go’ rather than to typically convert to any change a few years too late.
The summer lull is soon over.
We need to move ahead, face the various challenges with courage and determination and expeditiously carry out all the required action plans to achieve identified and realistic targets.
Dr Francis Zammit Dimech is a Nationalist MP