Let’s bring our workers back

A few weeks ago, the news broke that a group of Turkish workers were going to in essence be imported to Malta in order to work on the site formerly occupied by the Fortina Hotel. So far, so golden.

What was less than golden were further reports of where they would be allegedly living. I’m not going to take this issue to task today because that will take many, many column inches and I’m here to speak about an entirely different and mostly ignored kettle of fish.

Now, I’ll be the first one to say that I have no issue with people coming over and working in our country legally. As far as I’m concerned, if Mehmet from Izmir, Turkey wants to come here and work at a faster pace than an unshelled snail (which is the rate that many of our local builders work at), I’m all for it. But what I don’t appreciate is the rationale behind it and the fact that nothing is being done in our society to encourage people to want to take up trade jobs.

There has been an open war brewing for a very long time, whereby government administration after government administration has unabashedly fed into stereotype and prejudice, and even though the country is now on its knees, we have not stopped flogging...