Issue link: https://maltatoday.uberflip.com/i/1061063
maltatoday | WEDNESDAY • 12 DECEMBER 2018 5 NEWS MATTHEW VELLA CENTRAL Bank governor Mario Vella has warned that Malta's domestic labour gap can only be addressed by in- creasing female participation in the workforce, or else face increased reliance on auto- mated workers and Artificial Intelligence. In a speech that captured Vel- la's introspective assessment of the far-reaching changes taking place in Malta, the CBM gover- nor said Malta's rising popula- tion and foreign worker influx was clearly leaving its effect. "One has to acknowledge that the national working age popu- lation is what it is. With the male participation rate already around the euro-area average, a better utilisation of the domes- tic component of the labour supply can only be achieved if more women take up employ- ment or if the labour force works longer. Alternatively, production processes would need to rely on upgraded tech- nology, such as automation and artificial intelligence," Vel- la told the Institute of Financial Services Practitioners. But this change will only hap- pen gradually as more younger women join the workforce, and he said that automation and AI could resolve the problem of longer hours being incompat- ible with a better quality of life for parents and caregivers. Vella warned that Malta's high dependence on short- term foreign workers could also backfire on firms' com- petitiveness as wages rise faster than productivity. "There is an urgent need to understand the factors behind the relatively short stay of for- eign workers in Malta and de- vise solutions to this problem," Vella said, citing as one reason the rapid increase in rent in the private market. But he said that the CBM's own foreign staff has also reported other un- helpful matters, ranging from the difficulty of finding school places, opening a bank account and the time-consuming effort to get an ID card. Vella admitted that fast eco- nomic growth had "shaken" Malta economically, socially and culturally, as well as politi- cally – warning how continued increases in house prices risked rendering house ownership unaffordable for a wider seg- ment of the population. "This is not a moral judge- ment; it is a statement of what I believe is a sober understand- ing of the state of affairs," he said, likening Malta's experi- ence to what philosopher Zyg- munt Bauman calls 'liquid mo- dernity' and – quoting Bauman himself – "the growing con- viction that change is the only permanence, and uncertainty the only certainty. A hundred years ago 'to be modern' meant to chase 'the final state of per- fection' – now it means an in- finity of improvement, with no 'final state' in sight and none desired." But Vella said that such an "admittedly disquieting and unsettling" state of affairs could not be answered by retreating into nostalgic denial. "The only reasonable ap- proach is to endeavour tireless- ly and to the best of our techni- cal ability to navigate a reality that is complex, characterised by change and prone to crises. If there is no going back, then going forward means we can only go forward. "Navigating this reality re- quires us to be constantly vigi- lant to the risks involved… Of course, the financial system, like any other, cannot reduce risk to zero. We will always face inappropriate behaviour, but we are confident that Malta's financial system can withstand the shocks generated by such behaviour, given constant vigi- lance." Vella defended the Maltese financial jurisdiction by high- lighting its competence at su- pervising its licensees. "Two banks [Nemea and Pilatus] had their licence withdrawn, while another [Satabank] was put under the administration of a com-petent person. Despite the negativity of such develop- ments, these are in themselves indicative of the fact that Mal- tese authorities are actively taking the right measures to protect the sector from inap- propriate behaviour. mvella@mediatoday.com.mt Malta in the era of liquid modernity: 'We can't retreat into nostalgic denial' NIGHT inspections by the Committee Against Bird Slaughter (CABS) has revealed the illegal trapping of Golden Plovers and other nocturnal waterbirds as being still widespread and largely uncontrolled. The conservationists' group said that its vol- unteers identified a total of 40 bird trapping sites which were used for the illegal night trapping of plovers outside the permitted hours. "It was not hard to find these sites as all of them used illegal bird calling machines which can be heard from kilometres away, and the majority were also active in the past three years at least," CABS wildlife crime officer Fiona Bur-rows said. But whilst finding the poachers and their sites was relatively easy, it proved nearly impossible to get the police on site to arrest the poachers and confiscate their illegal gear and quarry. "After our team found sites with active callers in Burmarrad and Mgarr on the 4th and 5th December we called Mosta police who declared that they could not re- spond as it is the job of the ALE to deal with such cases. "However, as ALE don't work during night hours our reports could not be processed and the poach- ers were left undisturbed," Burrows said, adding that officers from the Wild Birds Regulation Unit (WBRU) were also unavailable to assist with night operations when requested. CABS also noted that in the following night (6th- 7th December) a joint patrol of CABS staff and ALE officers was organised to dismantle the bird callers and deregister the trapping sites in question. "Surprisingly all trappers decided to switch off their illegal calling devices on that particular night and no arrests were made," CABS president Heinz Schwarze said, adding that on the following night (7th to 8th December), when again no ALE offic- ers were on duty, most of the machines were found active again. CABS criticised the government for not provid- ing the ALE with enough resources to cope with the problem of illegal night trapping. "The fact that ALE has no regular night working hours also contradicts the new provisions in the le- gal notice for trapping which dictates that outside permitted trapping hours at least two police offic- ers or marshals shall be on duty," Schwarze said. "By lowering the legal minimum for enforce- ment-presence to zero the government once again proved that it has no interest whatsoever to bring poachers to justice. This conclusively proves that the government´s repeated declarations that trap- ping regulations will be strictly enforced are either empty promises or blatant lies," Schwarze said. Trapping CABS reports 45 cases of abuse, illegal sale of plovers on Maltapark Central Bank governor Mario Vella