Muscat's youth guarantee seeking education and training leading to jobs

Opposition leader Joseph Muscat has defended his proposal for a 'youth guarantee' that puts all school-leavers into education or training and employment, after Prime Minister Lawrence Gonzi on Sunday accused him of being "unoriginal" by "copying" a policy plank of the Party of European Socialists.

Addressing the executive committee of student organisation Pulse at the University of Malta, Muscat said his plans for a youth guarantee were modelled on a "team effort" on the part of the PES to tackle youth unemployment.

"Just like the EU provides bailouts, it should provide guarantees for young people. The PES has already earmarked €10 billion that can go to this fund. And we would like to see Malta adopt it before the rest of the EU does, as it is a good measure," Muscat said.

The PL proposal seeks to ensure all early school-leavers find a job, or continue studying or training. But Muscat also said Labour's youth guarantee would also seek to put youths into good-quality jobs.

Muscat dispelled criticism that he would "force" youths into government labour corps, as Gonzi surmised on Sunday in a reference to the Labour government programmes of the 1980s with the aim of achieving full employment.

"While we would target persons over 16 who would neither be in education, training or employment for over six months, the programme would be voluntarily and not forced on them.

"We are not reinventing the wheel: this is a programme inspired by best practices utilised abroad in countries like Austria and Finland," Muscat said.

The Labour leader also said he was "not in the business of faking slogans" - a jibe at the Nationalist Party's 2008 general election campaign where the slogan was identical to the Sarkozy campaign slogan 'Everything, together is possible'.

Asked whether he had an estimate of how much it would cost the government to implement the youth guarantee pledge, Muscat said the cost of not carrying out the initiative would be higher than implementing it.

But he did not give any figures.

The same proposal has been proposed by UK Labour leader Ed Miliband, whose 'real jobs guarantee' would offer six months' work to those aged 18 to 24 who have been jobless for a year, tagged at a cost of £600 million.

"It all depends on how many people undertake the programme," Muscat said. "But ours is different from Miliband's in the sense that we are not guaranteeing jobs but guaranteeing training and education which in turn would lead to jobs," Muscat said.

He added that a Labour government would make a concerted effort to reach out to young people who, after leaving school, were not listed in employment registers.

"The idea is not only to encourage them to pursue a career but also look in what has halted their studies in the first place and see if there are any social problems that need to be addressed."

Muscat said the Employment and Training Corporation (ETC) would be the backbone of this programme, while local councils and NGOs would also be on board.

"While the ETC has offered some good schemes, we need others which are more realistic. Public-private partnerships would also provide internships and job shadowing to help in the training," he said, qualifying his statement by saying that results would not be immediate.

"At its heart the youth guarantee is aimed at training youths for employability and giving them the skills by which they could look for other jobs. In manufacturing there is a demand for mould-making.

"Back in the day the Drydocks was an incubator for certain skills. After its closure, workers found jobs in yachting thanks to the skills they acquired," Muscat said.

"But today, we have a limited number of young workers with these skills. What we are looking at is the possibility of training the young at a time when certain industries are yearning for these skills."