Malta needs an economic transformation "and a rationalisation of the human resource," MEA President Joanne Bondin said in her speech during the 59th Annual General Meeting of the Malta Employers' Association (MEA).

Bondin also said that "in-work poverty needs to be addressed" through the enforcement of employee entitlements as well as through upskilling and increased productivity.

While stating the MEA's opinion that the adequacy of minimum wages should be improved and that minimum wage protection must be expanded, she referenced the EU's Minimum Wage Directive and said that the transposition of this legislation should lead to a reduction of in-work poverty. In-work poverty is felt when a working person retains less than 60% of their income after housing costs, leading to them struggling to meet the cost of living.

Bondin highlighted that this has been occurring in Malta in recent times "as a result of spiralling property and rental prices, and imported inflation." She also said that these external factors, alongside wage setting within an organisation, are factors in the adequacy of wages.

"Economic transformation is necessary to move people in higher value-added employment with the overall increase in national productivity being able to sustain improved working conditions also for the unskilled segment of the labour force," Bondin said.

The MEA President then spoke of the country's economic model being dependent on foreign workers. On this point, she said that this dependency on foreign workers "is attributable to a bloated public sector and a slow uptake of automation and digitisation technologies which would certainly release scarce human resources into more productive use."

"Such transformation is critical to both our social and economic development, given the prevailing demographic trends," she added. After calling for a long-term perspective in this regard, Bondin called for the country's economic objectives to be designed in tandem with well-being indicators, such as the natural environment. Saying sustainable economic growth is "not possible, nor desirable for its own sake, without a consideration of well-being parameters," she stated that for Malta, "this would be betraying the whole scope of enterprise" while leading to a heightened brain drain.

She also called for more proactivity in identifying the implications of EU legislation to local society. In this light, Bondin was critical that the recent implications of the Emissions Trading Scheme "went unnoticed until late 2023 when it was coming into force." She said that political parties and MEPs should have sent warning signals earlier before moving on to speak about the importance of good governance.

"Good governance is also an important aspect of well-being. Successive political scandals are fostering a sense of disillusionment in our institutions, particularly among the younger generation," she said.

Bondin said recent political scandals are causing youths to become "increasingly sceptical that success in life is the fruit of hard work and merit, or that justice is blind." She added that "many are preferring alienation to participation", and is alarmed that this "is a state of affairs that is fertile ground for a drug culture, which is becoming an issue in our society."

She also advocated for a legislation to be enacted to address the "numerous lacunae that make it very difficult for companies to implement a drug policy."

Concluding her speech, Bondin called for "appropriate institutional infrastructure" to be present in order to comply with legislation. Here, she referenced the local situation employers face with third-country nationals, such as the difficulty in dealing with their required ten-day employment renewal process as well as their difficulties in obtaining a local driving license.