Turkish workers won't take up permanent residence in Malta, construction company says

A Turkish construction company at the centre of media controversy has said that the workers it plans to bring over to work on large projects in Malta have no intention of taking up permanent residence.

In its first reaction to several reports on the hundreds of Turkish workers that will be imported to work on two large-scale projects, Taca Construction said the work visas prevented the workers from bringing over their families. "They have no intention of staying in Malta," the company said.

The company added that initial plans to erect a temporary village to house the workers in Mqabba were dropped. Taca said that although its "workers prefer to live together as a community as they have done in other countries... they will instead be housed in apartments".

Controversy has raged over the working and living conditions the Turkish workers will be kept in while in Malta after it was revealed that plans were underway to house them in mobile homes inside a quarry in Mqabba.

Industry sources had told MaltaToday that the company planned to bring over 500 workers, with the initial group numbering around 300.

In its statement the company did not say how many workers it would bring over but insisted that the 78 workers currently in Malta were earning an average monthly salary of €1,450 and benefited from private healthcare insurance, flight tickets, free accomodation and three meals a day.

Taca released the press statement on Thursday in its effort to correct the "misleading reports" published around the working conditions of its Turkish workers.

“We have a long-standing international reputation in the construction sector and are law-abiding citizens in each and every country where we are present. We are guests in Malta and we are following all the rules and will be paying tax as a Maltese entity,” company spokesman Deha Türkel​ said.

The company was one of a number of international construction firms that bid for a tender on the redevelopment of the Fortina Hotel in Sliema and the DB Group’s City Centre project on the former ITS site in St Julian’s.

The company, which has eight offices around the world, specialises in the construction of super structures.

Türkel said TACA Construction had sub-contracted Maltese contractors for equipment and machinery and is purchasing most of the construction supplies locally, thereby creating new economic opportunities for local industry.

“We bring a lot of expertise to the market through our extensive experience of large projects in other countries and we honestly cannot understand why we are being singled out for such attacks when we have done nothing wrong," he said.