After more than two and a half years of silence on the issue, the government confirmed this week that it was to establish an independent “prison board” to oversee detention centres for migrants by the month’s end.

The announcement appears to be a knee jerk reaction following media pressure, particularly from The Malta Independent on Sunday in last week’s edition, over the fact that such a board had not seen the light of day despite promises made in early 2005.

And the fact that the Cabinet had approved the rules establishing such a board in July this year does not account for the lengthy delay as dire living conditions at Malta’s detention centres persist.

Such a board, which is meant to operate in much the same way as that for inmates at the Corradino Correctional Facility, had been promised after 100 Maltese journalists petitioned the Justice and Home Affairs Ministry in February 2005 for access to detention centres following reports of appalling living conditions.

The petition had been denied, but an assurance was given that an independent board with the special remit of such detention centres would be set up in lieu of direct access by journalists.

Living conditions at Malta’s detention centres have been harshly criticised by international and Maltese humanitarian organisations. Such conditions, they report, are responsible for a host of psychological and physical ailments. But any form of public scrutiny, even by the press corps, is, however, prohibited.

A recent report by international humanitarian medical organisation Médecins du Monde (MdM), which provided health services for migrants at Malta’s open centres this summer, described living conditions at both the open and detention centres as “deplorable”.

In the meantime, Malta is facing European Commission infringement proceedings on three separate scores related to the rights and protection of refugees and new EU citizens, but Parliament is expected to transpose the directives in question after the summer recess.

Malta was also absent from the EU’s Third Report on Migration and Integration, published this week, as it had failed to respond to the Commission’s questionnaire. The report was to have gathered specific information on integration processes in member States over 2005 and the first half of 2006.