Workers who refuse to take a vaccine should not be entitled to quarantine leave, employers have said in a call for transparency concerning vaccine rollout.
The Malta Employers Association said Wednesday that employers should know who among their employees has been vaccinated or not, saying this was important to ensure workplace safety.
Their calls for a so-called 'green passport' tallies with EU Commission plans, with Brussels having said it will be presenting plans later this month for the creation EU-wide digital vaccine passports. Malta has previously said that it favours some form of vaccine certification.
The MEA recommendations are among 10 which the lobby group is making to the government. Others include a request for stricter enforcement of existing public health measures, cutting red tape at Identity Malta to facilitate work visa applications and tax reliefs for Brexit-affected businesses.
Despite economic hardships brought about by the COVID-19 pandemic, a significant majority of local business owners intend to keep their workforce stable over the next three months, an MEA survey has found.
Just over three out of every four (76%) said they had no plans to hire or fire workers over the next months. One in 10 said they would reduce their workforce, while 14% said they could add workers, though not necessarily to pre-COVID levels.
The survey also found that government predictions about a rapid economic recovery following the COVID crisis are not shared by private industry.
Around 45% of business owners surveyed said they expected their business to take more than one year to recover to pre-pandemic levels, with a further 24% saying they expected recovery to take around 12 months.
16% said they expected to recover within the next eight months, while 15% have not reported a drop in business.
That general air of pessimism is reflected in business’ investment expectations.
Two out of every three respondents said that investment projects remained postponed, and practically all of those respondents (92%) do not expect to restart those plans in the coming six months.