Catering industry ‘could not exist’ without third-country nationals, panel says

Malta’s catering industry could not survive without third-country national (TCN) workers, sector representatives warned during a panel discussion Tuesday.

Panellists at the second annual conference of the Association of Catering Establishments (ACE) argued that the sector’s rapid growth, coupled with its reliance on labour, meant TCN workers were essential to the industry’s survival.

While sector operators voiced complaints about long processing times at the Identità agency – warning such delays could see workers look elsewhere – they agreed the introduction of the skills pass and migration policy had led to improvements in the sector.

Their comments come as concerns continue over Malta’s rising migrant population and the country’s low fertility rate.

Speaking during a panel entitled 'TCNs - A true solution for the catering industry?’ Institute of Tourism Studies (ITS) CEO Pierre Fenech said that should non-EU workers leave Malta en masse, such a situation would be a “disaster”.

Stressing that the industry had “tripled” in size, Fenech said that while ITS was opening campuses abroad in a bid to attract more students, its most optimistic forecasts put the number of graduates at reaching 700 per year, which he said was not enough.

“The industry is growing. [Even] if no TCNs or Maltese people leave the industry, we [will] need 2,000 people each year,” said Fenech. "So, the mathematics are what they are”.

Echoing Fenech’s words, ACE member and business owner Alex Aquilina said that “If TCNs pulled out, we wouldn't have an industry... Our industry is labour-intensive”.

Recruitment specialist and Association for Temping and Outsourcing Agencies (AFTA) representative Daniel Coppini said that despite the importance of foreign workers, years of short-term thinking had left regulators struggling to cope.

“Over the past 15 years, short-term gains were prioritised over any sort of vision, so we ended up with stratospheric numbers… with a government which was caught off guard and not prepared,” he said.

“You’re talking about completely unprepared people, completely unprepared legislation,” said Coppini, describing media reports of abuse of TCN workers as “horror stories”.

“We ended up with government departments completely caught off guard, systems abused, and TCNs with virtually no standards,” he said.

Coppini argued that recent reforms, however, including tighter rules on temping firms and staff turnover – in part due to the government’s recent Malta Migration Policy – had led to positive results.

“We were finally given proper legislation. Many of the cowboys are completely – I would say 90% – out of that game at this point,” he said.

The Malta Migration Policy saw fees for new registrations of TCN workers at workplaces increase while fees for renewals lowered, among other measures, in a bid to encourage retention of staff and negate bad practice.  

Bottlenecks and delays

Responding to sectoral concerns over visa processing delays, Identità representative Andrea Cardona put long wait times down to incorrectly submitted applications and necessary checks on applicants.

“One factor Identità is seeing a lot of, is applications submitted incorrectly or without documentation, and this obviously prolongs the process,” he said. “Another factor is due diligence checks, which involve various stakeholders.”

Pressed on whether such checks were necessary, Cardona reiterated that various bodies were engaged in vetting applications, including the JobsPlus and the police. “When it comes to national security, sometimes these things take time”.

While acknowledging the need for background checks, Aquilina and Coppini responded by raising concerns about renewals, however.

“When it comes to renewals, do the third-party partners get involved again?” asked  Aquilina, noting one of his workers was still waiting for his ID card more than three months after submitting biometric data. “I just can’t put my finger on why it’s taking so long”.

Asked what more could be done to attract Maltese workers to the sector, Coppini attributed the phenomenon partly to Malta’s low fertility rate: “Basically, we don’t make enough babies”.

Fenech agreed, while suggesting it was a “negative” result of the country’s high-performing economy attracting young Maltese workers to other sectors.

Coppini warned that workers might be attracted to other EU countries such as Spain and Portugal should delays continue: “There’s competition, so that scares me tremendously; I think we’ll lose”.

Skills pass: Improved results

Panellists broadly agreed that the skills pass – an exam required for prospective non-EU workers – had achieved positive results, while calling for improvements.

Fenech, whose institution manages the qualification, said the tool had exposed how unprepared many applicants had been in the past.

“When we launched this skills pass, the failure rates were close to 50%,” he said. “Within the first two months, we started seeing these failure rates go down,” the ITS boss said, suggesting unskilled candidates had been put off applying.

As of January, 5,000 non-EU workers had acquired a skills pass to work in Malta.

Aquilina noted that while his own business had seen a chef turned away for not passing the skills pass exam, he was still “happy” that the measure had been introduced, while saying the skills pass needed “fine-tuning” to avoid delays.

Retention and integration

Beyond compliance, speakers stressed that the long-term sustainability of the sector depended on how workers were treated once they arrived in Malta.

“Our people are the soul of our business,” Aquilina said. “We need to respect them, we need to treat them well, we need to pay them well.”

He said catering businesses needed faster, more predictable decisions from authorities if they were to maintain stable staffing.

“What I would like to see is a speedier response to our needs, because we cannot lose our core energy, which is running operations... we can’t operate without people,” he said.

Advocating for employers to retain staff, Cardona warned that losing workers who had started integrating into Maltese society was harming wider integration efforts of non-EU nationals.