Malta's open centres for immigrants are like "giant car parks" where people are left waiting with little effort to help them integrate or acquire skills, according to a representative from the UN refugee agency.
"Last year when we visited Malta, the main problem was detention centres and their appalling conditions... and things have improved. But what we did not expect when we came back after 10 months was the bad situation in open centres," Laurens Jolles, from the UN High Commission for Refugees, said.
"It's not the conditions, as such, but the fact that nothing happens," Mr Jolles told The Sunday Times, stressing that immigrants who lived in open centres needed to be given more emotional support and individual attention to help them integrate into society and build a future.
Mr Jolles, who is the UNHCR's regional representative for Malta, was in Malta on a two-day routine visit during which he visited the Ħal Far open centre and the Church-run Peace Lab that also hosts immigrants.
He said that once people were recognised as being in need of protection, there should be more effort to help them sustain themselves, look at the future and integrate.
"If you compare Ħal Far with smaller centres, like Peace Lab, it's like night and day. Ħal Far is overcrowded, whereas at Peace Lab there are very dedicated people who work with smaller groups of people (immigrants) who they follow closely.
"There you see a genuine interest as the people are followed individually; there is training, English lessons and people's emotional wellbeing is looked after... However, in Ħal Far there are very limited examples of skills-training compared with the number of people there," Mr Jolles said.
"The Ħal Far centre is more like a giant car park. It's like people are being put there, in isolation, and they are waiting for something to happen, that is, that they can leave," he said.
Mr Jolles said, however, that the asylum process in Malta was "doing quite well".
Recent figures issued by the Refugee Commission show that just 232 out of 10,629 applicants were eligible for refugee status between 2002 and 2009.
Another 5,677 were granted subsidiary and 17 temporary humanitarian protection, while 251 withdrew their application, bringing the number of rejections to 4,452.
Mr Jolles pointed out that repatriation initiatives meant that other countries were helping Malta deal with the immigration burden.
"I really hope that, especially with the departure of a not insignificant group of people from Malta, in parallel with this we will also see some improvements in the reception, accommodation and integration of refugees," he said.
Speaking about the actual living conditions in Malta's open centres, he said there was room for great improvement.
Last August, migrants at the Ħal Far open centre, situated in a converted aircraft hangar, protested against the lack of adequate sanitary facilities for the more than 400 residents in a peaceful protest.
The protest ended five hours later after a lengthy meeting between migrants' representatives and the director of the Organisation for the Integration and Welfare of Asylum Seekers, Alex Tortell.