As Malta grapples with overpopulation, one man at the centre of it all – Identità CEO MARK MALLIA – tells Mark Laurence Zammit the problem is not foreign workers but that we have reversed the principles of recruitment: Malta is bringing in more workers than it needs, with the skills it doesn’t need.

The problem with overpopulation is not the foreign workers but employers who bring over more workers than they require without the specific skills needed, according to Identità CEO Mark Mallia.

“We’ve turned recruitment on its head and sometimes we’re just going for numbers,” the former army colonel told Times of Malta in an interview.

“Get me five or six workers, I need six waiters and four deliverymen, you hear employers say. That’s not how it should be. We must identify the specific skills our economy needs and strive to carefully select workers that best suit those needs.”

Mallia does not see why it should be a problem to recruit foreign workers. After all, the economy is growing, the supply of Maltese workers is not getting any bigger and unemployment is close to zero.

Clearly, the country needs foreign workers as well as temping agencies, he said.

“My own father would have died had it not been for a foreign surgeon who saved his life,” he said.

But some agencies over-employ third-country nationals and fail to ensure they have the required skills. Consequently, they are forced to start recruitment many times over, wasting time and resources.

Average of 8 to 14 months in Malta

Furthermore, third-country nationals spend an average of between eight and 14 months before they leave to some other EU country, he said. This means many employers have low staff retention and are constantly forced to recruit, train and integrate new workers in their systems, which is very inefficient and far from ideal for sustained business success.

Mallia said a good number of temping agencies are genuine and law-abiding, but Identità faces others that are rife with abuse “every day”.

In a significant number of cases, workers land in Malta only to realise the job they were promised does not exist, or to learn that by the time they got here, their employer did not need them anymore.

Some of those who actually get work are given a job that is not the one they were promised, others must forfeit too big a chunk of their hourly salary to the employer, and in some cases, employers lay off workers but continue to pay their tax and national insurance, just so that it looks like they still employ the worker in case inspectors come around.

“But the workers themselves often refuse to spill the beans when we start digging into the case,” Mallia said.

“They fear repercussions, even though it is sometimes clear they were victims of human trafficking. The law also protects them if they decide to speak out but they still don’t cooperate with us. We’re after the abusers, not the victims.

As from next year, Identità will be enclosing third-country nationals’ work permits in a booklet containing all information regarding their legal rights and obligations while they live and work in Malta.

The booklet also includes guidelines on what they should do if they believe they are victims of human trafficking and if they suspect their employer has breached their working conditions, along with contact details of the police, hospital, Jobsplus, and the Department for Industrial and Employment Relations (DIER).

Mallia also urged anyone who knows of any abuse to report to the police, Identità or the DIER immediately.

“My message to temping agencies is this: if you’re willing to abide by the law, you will find us by your side to help you, but it you’re not, expect us on your doorstep with the police,” he said.

Inspections up, rejection rate hits 40%

This year alone, Identità quadrupled the number of inspections on employers and workers, went to the police with more than 100 of them to have them criminally investigated, and refused more than 40 per cent of visa applications, Mallia said.

“We regularly have employers and workers walk out of our offices in handcuffs, when they hand us forged documents, for instance,” he said.

“Some say it’s good that we are more heavy-handed, some complain we are being too stringent, especially in refusing so many visa applications. But we’re better off like that because we can’t risk bringing in people who might do more harm than good to society. It’s ultimately a win-win situation for everyone.”

Identità is not the only agency that processes the applications. It refers each application to the police and Jobsplus for further investigation and market research before the worker is given the green light to enter the country.

Temping agencies ‘sprouting everywhere’

Mallia said temping agencies have been sprouting everywhere lately and the law to license and regulate them – which will go into force next year – will help curb the abuse.

Sometimes we’re just going for numbers

Temping agencies are companies that employ workers in different professions and post them in jobs across companies, shops, hotels, restaurants, and other industries.

Most workers are third-country nationals who are employed to help fill hiring gaps or seasonal shortages.

The system is slightly more complex, however, as third-country nationals often establish contact with the Maltese employer through other recruitment agencies in their home country.

These agencies are notorious for charging the desperate workers around €6,000 to get them a job in Malta, and Times of Malta has learnt that several Maltese temping agencies are getting a cut of that money with each worker they employ.

Even worse, by the time the worker lands in Malta, the employer would have already made enough profit off of them and informs them there is no job available for them anymore.

The worker is forced to find another job within 10 days – otherwise they are deported back home – while the employer strikes them off the agency’s books and moves on to bring over the next worker.

This constitutes human trafficking, Mallia said. It is illegal to get paid for giving someone a job but it is harder for authorities to curb abuse in employment agencies overseas because they lie outside Maltese jurisdiction.

However, Identità is in discussions with the government to detect and find ways to curb abusive patterns, he said.

Mallia said Identità also took over management of the visa appointment system last March to cut down on abuse in the process of appointment scheduling. The new system ensures workers are given appointments with a reasonable waiting time and that they are not asked to pay money to have their appointments bumped up the calendar.

The agency also added two-factor authentication to eID accounts as an extra security measure. This precaution was put in place to lessen the abuse that was previously occurring, in which individuals were stealing this information, misusing the eID credentials and applying for various Identità services without the knowledge of the actual holder, he said.