Conversion aims to provide accommodation for immigrants

The Peace Lab of Hal Far is setting up an accommodation programme to offer temporary homes to four immigrant families from Eritrea and Ethiopia as well as accommodation for emergency cases.

Lab director Fr Dionysius Mintoff said a big portion of the gardens of the Peace Lab, previously reserved for meditation, was now undergoing alterations and equipped to house these families.

The first phase of the programme is reaching its final stage so that the Lab would start receiving the first families offering them stability soon.

Fr Mintoff said the Peace Lab trusted that this programme would make a positive difference to the immigrant's lives and give them back hope and dignity.

Fr Mintoff also spoke about poverty, saying it was as big a scourge as terrorism. "Our greatest challenge this century is poverty. Our greatest debt is the debt to our brothers in the poorest parts of the world. Our greatest hope is our common humanity and solidarity," Fr Mintoff said in a message to mark the launch of the accommodation project. He also referred to the Peace Lab's mission of Christian care and support for the marginalised.

Over 200 immigrants are either locked behind bars of detention or in open centres for illegal immigrants, he said.

"As well as visiting them to meet their basic needs we are running art and native weaving workshops to keep them active in these difficult times and to help these individuals to live a settled way of life," Fr Mintoff said.