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[WATCH] Malta ‘cannot offer’ migrants opportunities – George Vella
Foreign minister claims migrants ‘don’t help themselves’ inside over-crowded detention camps • Officials tell CNN one suicide per week takes place inside detention centres
3 January 2014, 12:00am
Matthew Vella
Matthew Vella
1 min read
Foreign minister George Vella
Malta cannot afford to continue supporting migrants from war-torn countries in its over-crowded detention camps, foreign minister George Vella has told CNN.
Vella claimed that migrants were not "helping themselves" because they broke toilets and "smear the place" inside the detention centres.
Malta's detention centres have long been the bane of the island, heavily criticised by international human rights organisations and the Council of Europe's human rights commissioner.
"They don't care for the facilities they have... we cannot afford to carry on looking after all these numbers, and utilizing our resources," Vella replied when asked what the government can do to improve living conditions in the detention camp.
"We cannot offer these people the opportunities for which they left their countries and risked their lives to get a better life, many of them don't want to come to Malta, they come by chance as the boat drifts."
Vella said he wanted asylum seekers who are given protection to be able to be relocated, through a system that takes into account proportionality, to other EU member states. "We sincerely believe that given our size and our density of population, if you compare, we are taking a bigger strain proportionally than all the other countries in the European Union," Vella said.
Malta has received over €100 million in migration funds since becoming an EU member state.
Vella said that better border management on the eastern side of Libya, which borders Sudan, was needed, and that more help was needed for countries of origin.
Matthew Vella, a freelance journalist at MaltaToday, was formerly executive editor at Malt...
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One way of improving the situation at Hal Far is that the detainees are forced to keep the camp spick and span and to the highest standard of health and sanitary requirements. Health inspectors and wardens should check this every morning and evening as our scouts leaders used to do when in camp. The detainees must be ordered to do this for thei supper as I did with my children at home. At least they will learn the first lesson in a Western culture which is that nobody owes you a living ( to be fair this lesson should be also taught to some of our local undeserving benefit suckers.)
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The FM is right. But the Government has to take matters in its own hands and go to the UN and make the EU feel ashamed. Take the pressure off the Countries getting most of the burden and open processing centres on the North African coast making it possible for Countries like Malta to return migrants to these centres not to their countries and finding host countries but eliminating the hazards of crossing the Mediterranean, putting the illegal traffickers out of business and taking the pressure of countries like Malta. If the present UN machinery cannot handle this do it through the Trusteeship Council of the UN which is now without a real mandate.
Do it now before more loss of life.
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How much of the 100 million euro was spent on buying patrol boats and aircraft to bring even more immigrants to Malta? Not to mention the cost of fuel to run them.
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How much of the 100 million euro was spent on buying patrol boats and aircraft to bring even more immigrants to Malta? Not to mention the cost of fuel to run them.
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How much of the 100 million euro was spent on buying patrol boats and aircraft to bring even more immigrants to Malta? Not to mention the cost of fuel to run them.
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It is unbearable to hear Dr. Falzon saying half truths about the services his country offers to these immigrants. Having spent 3 months in hospital, I've seen enough to judge how well the migrants are informed about what they have to do to access hospital to be visited by a swarm of other migrants who do not respect in any way the rules and regulations of a hospital, not even basic hygiene. If I live in a filthy place, the first thing I'll do is try to clean it up.
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PROSIT, kliem meqjus u sewwa, nixtiequ izda ma nistghux. Skont Eurobarometer, fi zmien hamsin sena, 20% tal-popolazzjoni Maltija ser tkun 'barranija'
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Will the Opposition agree first? than ask your good question again please.
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What are you waiting for to send them back to Libya George?
