Malta’s engineer shortage threatens Vision 2050 dreams, Chamber warns

**Engineers must be central to Vision 2050, Chamber warns amid talent crisis**

Malta’s ambitious Vision 2050 strategy risks stalling before it even leaves the drawing board unless the island urgently reverses its growing shortage of engineers, the Malta Chamber of Commerce has warned. In a stark briefing delivered to MPs last week, the Chamber painted a picture of a nation hooked on mega-projects and tech start-ups but increasingly unable to staff them with home-grown talent.

“Every crane on the skyline and every EU-funded smart-city pilot depends on engineers, yet our supply is shrinking just as demand explodes,” Chamber president Marisa Xuereb told the parliamentary committee. “If we don’t act now, we will import our future instead of designing it ourselves.”

The numbers are sobering. According to the National Statistics Office, the number of Maltese students enrolling in engineering and manufacturing courses has fallen by 23 % since 2014, while the stock of foreign engineers working in Malta has doubled. The Chamber estimates that the economy needs an extra 1,200 engineers—civil, mechanical, electrical and software—within the next five years to deliver already-committed projects ranging from the Gozo tunnel studies to the €700 million Malta AI cluster promised in the budget.

For an island whose post-war identity was literally built by engineers—think the dry-docks clang that lulled Dockyard families to sleep, or the heroic 1970s tales of workers pouring concrete for the Delimara power station—the talent gap feels like a cultural as well as economic wound. “Engineering used to be a badge of honour passed from father to son,” reminisces 72-year-old Senglea resident Ġużeppi Camilleri, who apprenticed at 16 in the naval yard. “Now when I tell my grandson I was a marine fitter, he asks if that’s like a TikTok influencer.”

The Chamber’s policy paper, “Engineering Malta’s Future”, argues that the sector must be elevated to the same national-priority status as healthcare or tourism. It proposes a tripling of the €300,000 annual scholarship pot for engineering undergraduates, a two-year moratorium on tuition fees for female students who choose STEM degrees, and a fast-track visa for third-country nationals with chartered status. But the jewel of the plan is a Malta Infrastructure Corps—modelled on the old Royal Engineers—where graduates spend two years rotating through major public projects, earning a tax-free stipend and a master’s credit.

Education Minister Clifton Grima reacted positively, promising “concrete measures” in the forthcoming STEM strategy. Yet scepticism lingers. “We’ve heard pledges before,” notes University of Malta engineering dean Prof. Ing. Maurice Apap. “What we need is a seismic shift in how society valorises the people who keep the lights on and the water running.”

The human stakes are visible in Msida, where traffic crawls past the flood-relief tunnel that has been paused for six months while contractors scour Europe for a qualified tunnelling supervisor. Or in Marsa, where the new power-interconnecter compound is 30 % over budget after Maltese bids failed to meet EU technical criteria. “Delays don’t just cost money; they corrode public trust,” warns architect and urban blogger Konrad Buhagiar. “When projects slip, citizens blame ‘incompetence’, not realising we simply don’t have enough competent people.”

Beyond the cranes, the talent drought seeps into everyday island life. Farmers in Rabat report waiting eight months for a certified irrigation engineer to redesign water pumps, forcing some to abandon fields that have been tilled since the Knights. In Gozo, the much-vaunted electric-bus pilot is stuck at nine vehicles because no local technician is yet qualified to service the high-voltage batteries.

Still, there are glimmers of hope. A record 42 % of this year’s first-year engineering cohort at UM are women, up from 18 % a decade ago. Junior Achievement’s “Engineers in Class” programme, which sends young professionals into primary schools with spaghetti-and-marshmallow bridge challenges, has reached 8,000 pupils since 2019. And the Chamber’s own pop-up stand at the Malta Robotics Olympiad last month attracted 2,000 teenagers queuing to drive a 3-D-printed racing car.

“Vision 2050 talks about carbon-neutral, AI-enabled, high-quality living,” concludes Xuereb. “None of that happens without valves, grids, algorithms and concrete conceived by Maltese minds. Engineers are not cogs; they are the architects of the next Maltese miracle. Let’s start treating them that way—before the miracle ships out on the next Ryanair flight.”