Training for flexibility and changing technologies

Abstract

Malta's quest to become a full member of the European Union, offers a challenge to the island's industrial base - a challenge that involves a shift from a labour intensive, highly protected manufacturing industry to a knowledge-based capital intensive industry, open to fierce global market competition. One major implication of this shift is that the attraction of more foreign and local investment will no longer be based on an abundant, hard working and cheap labour force but on a multi-skilled, polyvalent human resource that is capable of adapting itself to continuous rapid changes in product development and international market requirements. This implication involves the provision of a different training system that caters for the development of a human resource that will be treated by operating organisations as a valuable asset to be continuously invested upon rather than as a factor of production whose cost should be kept at a minimum.