The prime minister on Wednesday expressed confidence that fresh talks could achieve a deal with the Malta Union of Teachers on a new collective agreement for lecturers at MCAST.
He was speaking hours after the union announced further industrial action following a stalemate in pay talks. The last collective agreement expired almost three years ago.
Lecturers held a protest on the MCAST campus on Tuesday and the union later issued industrial action directives which will limit lecturers' contact with the administration and students. Lectures will also not take part in MCAST activities and not issue student assessment marks.
Abela told an interviewer on One TV’s Bil-Fatti programme that he was confident that talks in good faith would lead to a generous and sustainable pay raise for the lecturers. A deal could be struck in the same way as agreement had been reached for the 'best-ever' collective agreement for teachers, and a deal had been reached which would see the government help independent schools.
“The important thing is to negotiate in good faith,” Abela said.
“My appeal is for reasonableness and observance of the principles of industrial relations.” He also hoped that industrial action would not impact the students.
University 'should be a forum of public debate'
In his interview Abela also referred to a decision by the University Students Council banning the NGO Graffitti from displaying pro-choice flyers in a stand set up for Freshers' Week.
The University, he said, should be a forum for public discussion.
Malta should stand by what it had achieved in freedom of expression and not fall back, Abela said, despite regrettable abuses as was the case of lawyer Jason Azzopardi's libellous post against Labour MP Carmelo Abela or the damaging Facebook post by 'a fake profile' claiming negligence caused the death of a man as the hospital's emergency department, claims which had been disproved. What was even more regrettable in the latter was that the PN had made those claims its own, undermining public confidence in medical practitioners.
Everyone should be free to exercise the right of expression as long as that was done without hurting anybody else, Abela said.
Budget focus on the quality of life
Questioned about the Budget, due to be announced on October 28, Abela confirmed that the government would widen the tax bands to benefit the middle class. There would be no new taxes.
This, he said, would be a Budget aimed at directing the country along the government’s vision for the next decade, with one of the priorities being to improve living standards. To this end the Budget would not be just about money and the economy, but incentives for education and the environment, while also addressing other areas, such as limiting the number of foreign workers to what the country truly needed.
The Middle East
The prime minister expressed his regret about developments in the Middle East, saying that, as had been feared, repeated calls for dispute resolution by diplomacy had not been heeded. What had happened in the past few hours was a consequence of the attitude of some countries which felt that conflicts could be resolved by further conflict.
Instead of a de-escalation, one was seeing a proliferation of regional disputes, impacting the lives of thousands of people, he said.