The Malta Chamber on Thursday expressed dismay at the government’s “ill-timed” announcement on the granting of an additional day of leave.

On Wednesday, Minister Carmelo Abela said that the additional day of paid leave announced in the Budget for 2020 had officially entered into force, through a regulation added to the Employment and Industrial Relations Act.

The chamber said that during this very sensitive and unprecedented period, the announcement “is insensitive to the extraordinary hardship which the country’s productive sector has been placed under” due to the COVID-19 pandemic and its devastating effects on demand and the labour market.

Beyond the assistance from government for certain businesses, most employers were making extreme sacrifices to maintain operations and retain their current workforce with the hope of surviving the economic tsunami.

As the country’s economy braced itself to lift itself up from the devastation that the pandemic brought about, added burdens were the last thing national competitiveness needed right now, Malta Chamber president David Xuereb said. 

In the past, the chamber had called for the measure to be neutralised by compensating measures to safeguard competitiveness, such as a reduction of employers national insurance contributions, compensation to private companies by means of a refund, or changes in sick leave benefits.

It said the government should reconsider these proposals to mitigate the impact of the measure.

Alternatively, it should seriously consider applying the same “exceptional circumstance” proviso which already existed in the cost of living adjustment mechanism legislation and postpone the measure until such time when the country was producing acceptable, positive levels of gross domestic product or to when the private sector could afford it.