Cleaner, labourer most common jobs among refugees

A Maltese project part-financed by the European Union which has helped government to better help the local integration of refugees and beneficiaries of protection has seen the engagement of 194 persons in legal employment.

The €179,166 project, 'An employment support initiative for refugees and beneficiaries of protection', had as its main target the prevailing situation of persons waiting for employment opportunities, particularly at Marsa and Hal Far open centres.

For the past twenty months, the project also sought to curtail the negative effects of illegal employment.

Led by the Agency for the Welfare of Asylum Seekers in collaboration with ETC and the Foundation for Shelter and Support to Migrants, the project found that most common jobs among refugees were that of cleaner, labourer and painter.

Addressing the conference, parliamentary assistant within the ministry for home affairs Beppe Fenech Adami said that Malta's integrations efforts are "regularly misinterpreted or ignored".

"This project and the policy behind it are regularly under reported or not reported at all," he said, adding that government has gone beyond giving an emergency response in irregular immigration.

Fenech Adami said that the perception amongst many practitioners in the field was that Malta was being pressured to import mostly-failed integration policies.

"What we need is for foreign institutions and individuals with no agenda help us learn what successful integration means in the context we are in, and how to implement these programmes and measures in proportion to our resources," Fenech Adami said.

He insisted that the challenge was to keep relocation, repatriation and integration in balance.

"For example, in the current summer climate of increased arrivals, we cannot fail to reiterate that only a small number of legally-residing third country nationals who have obtained protection in Malta will manage to successfully integrate here. This is important as we do not want to promote second-class integration," he said.

He added that employment was a key part of the integration process and was central to the participation of immigrants and to the contributions immigrants made to the host society.

Fenech Adami went on to say that successful integration required the "assistance of relocation or resettlement, which allow for integration elsewhere of protected persons".

He also said that the improper use of integration terminology for interventions with persons on the return track should be revised.

Fenech Adami said that the legal employment of such persons was in line with the importance of employment for wealth creation in Maltese society.

"It enables businesses to continue finding personnel to employ, for third-country nationals to enter into the labour market to provide for themselves and their families through employment, in full regard for the rights and obligations of every actor," he said.