Last November, a number of people were brought over from India, Pakistan and Nepal to work in tourism. But, when they arrived, those who arranged for them to come informed them that there was no work after all as it was low season.

A few days later, they were told to go to Ta’ Xbiex and start setting up the Christmas Village. They worked for at least 10 hours a day. Some of them worked also in January to dismantle it. They still have not been paid.

Day after day, they begged their employer to pay them, at least €3 an hour so they could pay their rent and buy some food. The local agent who brought them over threatened to report them to the police as illegal migrants and have them deported.

They had been promised that they would make good money in Malta, enough to be able to send some to their family. So they had borrowed money to come to Malta. They needed to pay that loan as well. After five months, they have still not been paid. They are now at the mercy of the local agents.

In its report for 2021, the US Department of State asserted that “Traffickers replace the original signed contract with a less favourable one upon migrants’ arrival in Malta or force victims to perform a completely different job to what was agreed upon...”

The report goes on to say that “Though illegal, traffickers often confiscate the passports of victims upon arrival…. [and] co-nationals of trafficking victims and Maltese citizens frequently work together to exploit victims”.

Seven years ago, local unions spoke out against the exploitation of these migrant workers. They promised to protect them but most of the thousands of migrant workers among us remain not unionised and completely vulnerable.

Unions should start protecting them, not only because they are people who deserve to be treated with dignity but also because the easy availability of cheap foreign labour in poorly paid sectors of the economy has started to undermine the rights and working conditions of Maltese workers as well.

Migrant workers are made to pay thousands of euros (the sums of €8,000, €12,000 and even €20,000 are mentioned) to agents in their countries before being granted a visa to travel to Malta. It is then the turn of Maltese agents to exploit them further once they arrive here.

They make them pay a commission of €300 monthly from their low pay. Some have even been forced to become sex workers in massage parlours even though they were lured to Malta with promises of a decent, well-paid job.

Slavery is back

We need workers from other countries as we have a very low birth rate and there are not enough Maltese to take the jobs we create every year. Our fertility rate is below the critical 2.1 threshold, which allows one generation to exactly replace itself. We are going through a demographic suicide but have never discussed the consequences and how we can avoid it.

At 1.1, Malta is one of the 10 countries in the world with the lowest fertility rate, so the need for foreign workers is not likely to change. But we need to make sure that there really is work for migrant workers and they are not simply a means for traffickers to make money.

We are allowing thousands of workers from Asia, Latin America and Africa to be treated as slaves among us- Evarist Bartolo

Besides, we need to make sure that our social and economic development is sustainable and our country liveable. How many more people, buildings, cars, schools, hospitals and general infrastructure can we cater for without collapsing? How do we create a society where we integrate the foreigners without overwhelming the Maltese?

In Malta, migrant workers and their families often experience marginalisation, xenophobia and poor living and working conditions.

The worst treated are reportedly those coming from Sub-Saharan Africa.

They find it very difficult to rent a flat. In a village the same small flat is rented to a Maltese for €850 a month and an African for €1,800. The only way such an African migrant can afford the rent is to share with another five migrants and split living costs as best they can.

Like all migrant-receiving states in Western Europe, North America, Australia and Arab States of the Persian Gulf, Malta has not ratified the 20-year-old International Convention on the Protection of the Rights of All Migrant Workers and Members of their Families.

It provides guidance on national migration policies to ensure that minimum standards of human dignity are protected. The convention does not create new rights for migrants but aims at guaranteeing equality of treatment and the same working conditions for migrants and nationals.

The convention proposes that action be taken to eradicate clandestine movements, notably through the fight against misleading information inciting people to migrate irregularly and through sanctions against traffickers and employers of undocumented migrants.

We are allowing thousands of workers from Asia, Latin America and Africa to be treated as slaves among us. As Godfrey Wettinger reveals in his outstanding book Slavery in the Islands of Malta and Gozo 1000-1812, slavery was a prominent part of our economy in that period, slave labour was widely used in Malta and a thriving slave trade was operated from Malta throughout the Mediterranean.

In June 1798, after he took over Malta from the Order of St John, Napoleon Bonaparte decreed that “Slavery is abolished. All the slaves known as ‘bonavogli’ are set free and the contract they made, dishonourable to human-kind, is destroyed”.

Two hundred years later, slavery is back in the islands of Malta and Gozo. The state is doing all it can to stop human traffickers sending boat loads of migrants from Libya.

Yet, it is allowing human traffickers in Asia and Malta to play the system and operate a thriving slave trade on the backs of thousands of migrant workers arriving here by plane.

Evarist Bartolo is a former Labour foreign and education minister.