MPs hear how migrants live in squalid, crowded premises, or tents on roofs

Marsa councillors made suggestions on ways to stop the exploitation of migrants and ease pressures on their hometown when they met members of the parliamentary Social Affairs Committee and Family Affairs Committee on Wednesday. The committees were discussing the 'ghettoisation' of migrants in Marsa. Marsa Deputy Mayor Josef Azzopardi said that many of those who congregated in Marsa in the mornings did not hold Maltese work permits. Rather, they would have come to Malta from other countries such as Italy and Greece, where they had been granted resident status. In terms of the Dublin II Convention, migrants had been given the right to travel freely through the Schengen Area, but were restricted to working in the country where their status as refugees had originally been recognised; there was no way for these persons to seek legal employment. As a result of the bad economic circumstances prevalent in many European countries, migrants who were unable to find work in the countries where they had a legal right to work came to Malta in search of gainful employment. More often than not, however, they ended up seeking illegal, unsafe, and badly-paid work by Maltese contractors, who...