GRTU Malta Chamber of SMEs, in a statement today expressed its satisfaction that the last call of the Employment Aid Programme [1] (EAP) targeting Gozo was successfully taken up by Gozitan Enterprises.
The EAP is a scheme made available through the European Union Social Funds which has in the past been very successful in creating employment opportunities within enterprises through a part financial reimbursement incentive.
“In fact Government is earmarking that through the Gozo call enterprises will be creating 357 jobs, 46 of these individuals being on the employment register and 198 inactive.” The GRTU added that it had “heavily advertised the scheme with its Gozitan members and encouraged them to apply. “We are now pleased therefore that this joint effort between the authorities, SME representatives and the enterprises themselves, has so far been successful.”
GRTU said that it also welcomes the fact that through the successful uptake of the scheme Malta has reached its 10% target of EU funds allocated to Gozo.
“Unfortunatley in the past enterprises have experienced a number of bureaucratic burdens and delays through this scheme, especially when they arrived to the point of claiming the grant through reimbursement and being actually awarded the reimbursement.,” the Union said. “We are however aware that Gozo scheme has been simplified and processes have been streamlined to bring the administrative burden to a minimum. We therefore hope that if 357 jobs will be created, the number of reimbursements given to enterprises will be very close to this number.”
GRTU saidthat it welcomes Parliamentary Secretary Ian Borg’s assurance that there will be once again similar schemes opening not only for Gozo but also for Malta under the next funding period.
GRTU is in constant insistence with the Government that this should take place in the very near future. At that point GRTU hopes we would have learnt from past experiences and administer such schemes in a less bureaucratic manner and also split the reimbursement so that employers would not have to wait till the very end to acquire the funds,” the Union concluded.