The cost of processing asylum applications has more than tripled in a matter of a year as a consequence of a contingency plan aimed to prepare the country for any influx, according to the National Audit Office.
Despite processing substantially fewer applications than in 2009 – 68 per cent less – the cost of each application processed last year skyrocketed to €708 from €197, with more being spent on salaries, professional services and administrative costs.
This, the NAO says, can be seen as the price to pay for the Refugee Commissioner’s office to be constantly in a position to deal with the irregular influx of asylum seekers.
“Recent events have shown it is imperative that Malta has the adequate contingency plans and administrative capacity in place, which can be significantly costly,” it says, adding that the government can still review external contracts to cut costs.
The commissioner’s office may have more work heading its way because the NAO acknowledges that the situation in “North Africa raises serious concerns on the possibility of a substantial influx of irregular immigrants”.
Malta has the highest proportion of asylum procedures in the EU but the NAO report establishes that asylum data is “extremely fragmented” if not “outright inconsistent” in certain instances.
It recommends that information related to asylum seekers should be integrated and should include costs, the processing of applications and place of residence. “Otherwise, the present fragmented, and often inconsistent, information system would render efforts to enhance efficiency and effectiveness in the area of asylum management and control even more difficult if not outright impossible,” the report says.
The report, focusing on the period spanning 2006 to 2010, says there was “significant progress” since the first major influx of asylum seekers in 2002 but that “more has to be done to ensure asylum cases are concluded in a shorter time frame”.
On average, asylum applications were closed within the Office of the Refugee Commissioner’s self-imposed target of six months. At the end of last year, 68 per cent of applications were adjudicated within this period, a marked improvement from the 38 per cent registered in 2006.
Between 2006 and 2010, the office decided 7,860 asylum applications, 42 per cent of which were rejected, with “some form of protection” being given to the rest. However, a “substantial number of rejected asylum applicants still remain in Malta” even though by law they are obliged to return to their country of origin.
One of the factors leading to this is that Malta does not have diplomatic relations with the countries of origin of many asylum seekers. In addition, the country lacks a specialised repatriation coordination unit. This, in turn, led to the “government incurring additional costs and stretching Malta’s asylum infrastructure even further”.
Some years ago, the infrastructure was under considerable strain, particularly in its human resources department. “In July 2007, an internal exercise carried out by the office estimated that to cater for the total number of irregular immigrant arrivals the commission required 14 technical personnel. At the time, the office employed eight technical officials,” the report notes.
To exacerbate matters, the portion of irregular migrants applying for asylum shot up to 97 per cent in 2008 from about 72 per cent in 2007 and the office had to start implementing additional EU directives, which took up more of its time.
Some delays were also due to legal aides not handing in their reports in time, which, on two occasions, caused the Refugee Appeals Board to have to suspend hearings because “all the outstanding cases were awaiting the submission of legal reports from lawyers”.
Financially, asylum procedures – including food, shelter, health care and administrative and legal services given during the asylum application and appeals procedures – set back the country €17.9 million in 2009 and €12.5 million last year. This excludes search and rescue operations. The figures become more telling when compared to the country’s gross domestic product. An EU report published last year found that, in 2007, when irregular migration was more rampant than previous years, Malta had the “highest spending across the EU on a proportional basis” at 0.26 per cent of the GDP.
“The result was compounded by the fact that Malta, the EU’s smallest member state, has the lowest capacity to deal with the problem, based on its population size, population density and GDP per capita,” the report says.