The government, finally, is admitting that something needs to be done to curb the growth in the country’s population.

When the Labour Party took over the political reins in 2013, some 425,000 lived on the islands. Today, just 10 years later, we are nearing 550,000, a staggering growth which, according to Finance Minister Clyde Caruana, would need to expand further to 800,000 by the year 2040 to keep the economy growing at the current rate, unless a new economic model is devised.

Right from the start of Labour’s administration a decade ago, it was clear that we were heading towards a huge surge in the number of people who reside in Malta. The policy was never declared, but it soon became apparent that the government was facilitating the importation of employment, including that of people arriving from outside the European Union.

Former Prime Minister Joseph Muscat was warned to change course, but he refused the notion that Malta’s economy was in good shape solely as a result of population growth. As time went by, the increase in population put extra strain on every aspect of our communal life, including the infrastructure, the environment, energy, health and education. Just look the progressing traffic difficulties, overcrowded beaches and the waste crisis to get an idea.

Muscat continues to defend his position. Last June, when questioned by The Malta Independent, he said his government’s policies had not been a failure; rather, they created wealth. More recently, he went a step further and said that the economic model his government had chosen had enabled “everyone” to become “rich” (sinjur zghir), an insult to all those who cannot make ends meet, cannot afford a holiday, are beneath the poverty line or close to it, have to work three or four jobs to run their family, and whose spending power has decreased exponentially as a result of inflation.

When Muscat resigned and was replaced by Robert Abela, there was no change in policy. The new administration remained on the same lines even though, when the changeover happened in 2020, the stress that had been accumulating in the previous seven years by over-population was there for all to see.

Other than Minister Caruana, Labour exponents used to close both eyes and ears to the negative effects of having such a dramatic mushrooming in the number of people living here. It is only in the last few days that we are seeing a slight change in approach.

We are thankful for that. If there is to be change, one first needs to admit that something is wrong. Refusing to accept the obvious meant that there could be no plan to adjust one’s direction. So now that the government seems to have woken up to see what was evident to the rest of us, there is hope that the situation could be addressed.

We have been told that the government has embarked on a series of measures that aim to control the number of non-EU citizens living in Malta. “There is a concerted effort to limit the population growth,” Home Affairs Minister Byron Camilleri told Times of Malta.

Whereas the focus, in 2013, was to bring in as many non-EU nationals as possible to push up the economy, the focus has now shifted on investing in industries that do not need so much manpower, we were told.

The Prime Minister himself acknowledged this change. Speaking on the PL’s media on Tuesday, he said that the country is now looking to succeed in sectors that do not depend on the number of workers, but on their quality. In this economic transition we are taking and promoting a different path, he said.

Is Labour ditching Muscat’s policies? Abela will never say that, because he knows he would be shooting himself in the foot, given that Muscat still has a huge hold on the Labour grassroots. But what Labour is saying now is a denunciation of Muscat’s policies. The changes, if and when they come, may be camouflaged so as not to appear to be rejecting what Muscat’s government did. But, deep down, what Abela wants to do now is reverse all that was wrong with Muscat’s policies.

Is it too late to change tack? Maybe, considering that the ripple effect of the population growth tentacles has reached out to so many sectors that it is hard to imagine a turnaround. Industries such as catering and construction today are based on foreign workers, many of them coming from non-EU states.

Is there really an effort to move away from businesses based on manpower numbers to ones with highly-skilled workers? There is scepticism on this, as the Labour government in the past decades has struggled to come up with new niches where quality is given more importance than quantity.

Maybe the budget for 2024 will tell us more on what the government intends to do.