August is with us and, as happened last year, we have begun to see a bigger influx of irregular immigrants.
In three days, a total of 256 people arrived in Malta and Gozo. Most hailed from Africa, some of them were women, some children, some pregnant and the rest were men.
Some were in quite a sorry state when they arrived and had to be given treatment for dehydration and heat exhaustion.
At this present time, we should not be moaning and groaning about it and entering what has become a two sided dialogue – one focusing on tolerance and aid, the other focusing on intolerance and denial.
What should be our immediate focus is how we are going to deal with this influx. Our detention and open centres are full and our army is stretched to its limit. The Armed Forces of Malta has inherited the British practice of not often speaking out about the problems they face.
Yet its commander, Brigadier Carmel Vassallo, spoke out this weekend and admitted point blank that the army was close to breaking point.
He said it will not be able to cope unless it is given more manpower to deal with this latest crisis, and that he has also had to order the shutdown of various smaller units, including the motor unit which, for example, handles road blocks.
He said that the AFM could not work with so few resources and that “something drastic” would have to be done.
One could not agree more. There are over 800 immigrants in the army’s care – yet they only have a total staff complement of 1,500. It must be borne in mind here that that figure includes officers and other ranks. So we are left with a ratio of less than one to two. In addition, the army still has its other jobs to do. So how are they going to cope?
The first thing we need is for the Foreign Minister to get back on the phone to Brussels, to keep pushing for help to deal with the problem, which he has, of course, been doing for quite some time now. But maybe it is time for Malta to get a bit tougher.
Let’s face it – we simply cannot cope. We do not have the luxury of drafting a large number of new recruits which, for example, the UK, Germany or Italy can do – simply because there are not enough men available to do the job.
We could perhaps call for more aid from NGOs – which are, of course, already giving assistance, but perhaps it is time to use them to their full potential and maybe even ask foreign NGOs if they could lend a hand.
It could easily be argued that we could use police officers to alleviate the burden… but we cannot, because we already have a shortage of officers – to the extent that our police stations are already short-staffed and some do not even open.
We must decide what drastic measures need to be taken, because there is no doubt about it, the only way this issue is going to be dealt with effectively is if something or someone completely new comes into play.
The situation is untenable.
What will happen when the number of people it is assigned to watch over out-
number our entire AFM? Some may argue that this is already the case…
We only ask one question.
August brings with it calm seas and winds. What will the situation be like at the end of the month? The time to act is now, before we cannot cope at all.