News | Sunday, 21 June 2009

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Government offers no guarantees over homeless immigrants

David Darmanin
At least 60 Hal Far Tent Village residents have told this newspaper they will be sleeping in the streets of Valletta after 1 July, when an eviction notice handed down by the organisation in charge of the open centre – OIWAS – comes into force. Twelve of the evictees are single mothers and children.
“None of us have jobs, and after we are thrown out of the open centre we will be losing our €4.66 daily allowance too,” a Somali man with subsidiary protection told MaltaToday. “We will have no money for shelter or food. Since we will have no other choice but to sleep out in the streets, we might as well sleep where everybody can see us. People need to know what we’re going through.”
Reacting to this development, a spokesperson for the Ministry of Justice and Home Affairs yesterday defended the open centre system as “just and humane”. The standard procedure used by OIWAS (Organisation for the Integration and Welfare of Asylum Seekers), and also by NGOs which manage open centres, is to get residents to sign an agreement before entering the open centre, which is then terminated after a period of one year.
Once this term elapses, open centre social workers may be asked to assess whether or not residents are prepared to take up independent living. If not, it is within the remit of social workers at the centre to recommend an extension of stay of four months.
“This is necessary for two main reasons,” the ministry official said. “1) So that open centre residents are not institutionalised, and remain under the impression that there is no need to worry about the future or try to integrate in the labour force, or leave the country even if they are refugees, persons with humanitarian protection status or persons who do not qualify for protection; 2) so that they no longer occupy available space that could be offered to other persons just released from detention.”
The Ministry also insisted that while single parents and vulnerable cases are also subject to this agreement, the agreement would not be terminated in their case until an in-depth study has revealed that alternative accommodation is available.
“Our system contrasts sharply with those in place in other countries, where immigrants released from detention find themselves without a roof over their heads or any form of assistance,” the spokesperson said.
But social workers who talked to MaltaToday paint a different picture, in which government policy itself does not formally allow accommodation for cases of vulnerability.
Residents facing eviction have sought help at OIWAS’s social work unit, at the Church’s emigrants’ commission, as well as the Immigration Department within the Police Headquarters, but they were told that nothing could be done this time since the decision was governed by ministerial policy.
A government source said that social workers often find themselves “torn between their remit as social workers and their duty to follow government policy. There is no formal procedure in place which would identify residents as being in a vulnerable position prior to them being sent an eviction notice.”
OIWAS director Alex Tortell told this newspaper that “if we feel that any error has been made, or that a person’s circumstances have changed (such as loss of job), I have no issue with reversing any decision the agency has made should there be any objective error.
“In this line of work we will stretch as much as necessary to avoid any hardship to anyone if our means and resources can allow it – assuring at the same time that we abide by best professional practice in the field,” he said.
Asked whether OIWAS will ensure that eviction will not lead to homelessness, Tortell could give no guarantees.
“I will need the reference numbers of the people you are referring to before I can answer your question,” he said. “I cannot limit myself to any service user, because he or she is not identifiable, and there are intakes and terminations in open centres every week of every year, and each case has its own story.”

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