Gozo businessmen ‘livid’ at staff leaving to join public sector ‘when most needed’

Many Gozo businessmen are livid at having employees - whom they supported heavily during the worst of the COVID-19 pandemic - leaving their employment in droves to join the public sector, BusinessToday has learned.

Joseph Borg, chairperson of the Gozo Business Chamber, said that, after the COVID mitigating meeting measures started to be relaxed, many businesses in Gozo registered an exodus of employees to the public sector.

“This has left many of our members irked, especially after many had sacrificed a lot to make sure to keep their staff employed, and paid, during the worst months of the pandemic,” he said.

Borg acknowledged that this was a phenomenon that had been happening for decades. But he insisted that the large number of employees leaving the private sector for a job with the government following the relaxation of measures was unprecedented.

He said this was happening in Malta too, as his association confirmed in a recent meeting with the Malta Chamber. However, Gozo businesses were feeling the effect more acutely due to the much smaller employment pool on the smaller island.

And it is not pay that is motivating this exodus, since in many cases people are joining the public sector at a lower pay-grade than they enjoyed before.

Borg conceded that some people join the public sector for security of tenure, knowing full well the private sector can never guarantee long-term employment that civil servants enjoy.

“And the private sector, by necessity, holds employees to a higher standard and expects, and demand, elevated levels of productivity,” Borg told BusinessToday.

“That is not necessarily true throughout the public sector and many join just to be able to enjoy a more relaxed work life, where discipline is somewhat curtailed.”

Being in the run-up to an election was also not helping, he said.

But identifying which ministry or department was most to blame was difficult with three Gozo ministers sitting on the Cabinet.

Borg said, however, he believed that many employees left the private sector seeking a more cushy posting and not because of political favouritism.

He said the government should not accept everyone a priori and that it should help the private sector by limiting the numbers joining the public sector.

The Gozo Business Chamber and the Malta Chamber agreed that whilst understanding the needs of the public sector, overstaffing across various government departments and entities, eliminates business competitiveness.

“What hurts most is having employees leave at a time when they are needed the most, when businesses are starting to get back on their feet after months of inactivity or reduced business,” Borg said.

‘Worrying’ trend - finance minister

Speaking on TVM’s XtraSajf, finance minister Clyde Caruana said that recent trends of private-sector employees in Gozo, moving on to public sector employment, was “worrying” for government.

“Of course, the situation worries me. We are either going to employ a style of politics which helps the private sector to succeed or we do nothing,” he said on TVM’s Xtra Sajf.

Caruana said he understands the sentiment felt by private sector employers.

“I think the public and private sector should not be competing against each other,” he said.

The finance minister said the public sector’s way forward is not to continue expanding, but rather to aid the private sector in generating more wealth.

“We are either going to change the way we do things, or we are going to remain the same,” he said.

This newspaper reached out to the Gozo ministry for comment, but no reply was forthcoming by the time we went to print.