If I’m understanding correctly, by “vocational” training or education, we refer to what used to be called in the past technical education, by way of an apprenticeship or attendance at trade schools. European data, if I’m also getting it right, seems to be placing us way back in this area. In the past, not least because of the shipyards, we were quite upfront.

Over the years the prestige of, and interest in, technical trades has declined. The skills of welding, machining and such like are waning. The emphasis has shifted to “academic” skills, or towards areas of knowledge which no matter how interesting, sometimes allow one to know something about everything, without concentrating on any one technical area with a view to mastering it.

Similarly, the publicity for training courses stresses areas of study which like journalism, are most important, but which cannot offer too many future job opportunities. The technical skills related to mechanical, electric and electronic engineering have apparently been relegated to the third division.

I hope I’m wrong in this. It would be a tragedy if this country becomes dependent on foreign labour to cover its needs in these sectors.

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Scaremongering

The current bout of scaremongering about the evil that could occur as soon as the gas tanker is placed alongside the new power station sent me back more than twenty years down memory lane.

At the Labour Party, we were carrying out the first moves to launch a private TV station. Technically we needed to discover how and with what reach we could emit TV signals that could be captured all over Malta and Gozo.

An antenna was set up at the Labour club in Rabat to determine how far its signals could range. Immediately, in agitated terms, the PN started to warn people, especially Rabat residents, about the increased risks they were being subjected to, of contracting cancer. This campaign went on for weeks on end.

Time flies but the tactics of scaremongering hardly change. 

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Checks and balances

In the road we still need to pursue in order to achieve acceptable standards of good governance in the public and private spheres, a main dilemma is how to establish checks and balances that take proper account of the need for necessary decisions to be implemented; and also the need to ensure that decisions are reached in a just and transparent manner.

Too frequently in the past, even with the primitive accountability systems that we possess, the techniques of appeal and contestation were effectively deployed to kill or delay decisions that needed to be taken.

Meanwhile other decisions were taken hurriedly and in camera without anybody really knowing or caring about how and where they would end up.

In both cases outcomes were disastrous. Even now, many of the proposals that are floated regarding an improvement of governance appear to be guided by tactical short term calculations, rather than by considerations as to what is reasonable and doable given the circumstances that prevail as of now in our society.