On August 4, a boatload of over 100 irregular immigrants sailed into Delimara escorted by two civilian boats not by the usual accompanying presence of an AFM Maritime Squadron vessel. The AFM were alerted to their presence only as the migrants were approaching land.

Was Malta’s border security seriously undermined by this incident? The short answer is no. The arrival of the immigrants on land was handled in the usual way and medical and other reception procedures were duly followed. Although it would clearly have been better if the boat had been detected earlier, no security harm was done though, given the professional pride of the AFM, they would undoubtedly have been mortified by the lapse.

The bottom line is that the AFM have been extremely stretched by this year’s unrelenting succession of boats filled with migrants heading through the central Mediterranean seeking a new life in Europe. Malta’s search and rescue region – an area covering almost 206,000 square kilometres – has been dotted with small, overcrowded boats, many unseaworthy, some experiencing extreme difficulties.

All of these have had to be monitored, some have had to be escorted safely past Malta and others have had to be rescued. On August 4, as one small inflatable dinghy sneaked though unnoticed, the AFM’s maritime and air sea rescue ‘assets’ (boats and helicopters) were engaged in another “very delicate” case about 30 miles off Malta involving another dinghy with over 90 people on board.

In 2013 alone, Malta’s Regional Coordination Centre (RCC), which handles all search and rescue operations in an area that stretches from near Tunisia in the west to near Greece in the east and from halfway to Sicily in the north to halfway to Libya in the south, acted on over 400 search and rescue and border control operations, leading as prime coordinator in over one third of cases.

This is a remarkable work rate for a force as small as the AFM. It involves not only a high degree of front line professionalism in the maritime and air squadrons, and the operational staff in the coordinating headquarters, but also in the support and logistical staff who have to keep the ships and aircraft air- and seaworthy.

The officers and men in the AFM are its greatest asset, which politicians sometimes tend to take for granted because they are invariably ignorant of the pressures and risks placed on overstretched manpower and overcommitted equipment. Both are vulnerable to fatigue if they become overstretched.

Although the Police Commissioner is ostensibly Malta’s principal immigration officer and responsible for immigration matters, the AFM has borne the brunt of the irregular immigration workload.

The AFM is responsible for all maritime surveillance and search and rescue of immigrants’ boats in the country’s RCC and has provided all the barracks accommodation and infrastructure for the detention centres as well as the bulk of the personnel to man them.

Irregular immigration has been a task the AFM has borne with its customary resilience, loyalty and good leadership.

Yet, the Minister for Home Affairs and National Security should recognise that there are constraints on how much a small force can do with limited resources.

The Government must ensure that the AFM works within clearly laid down priorities, which realistically reflect the human, equipment and logistical resources made available to them.

The AFM commander’s assessment of what is operationally feasible must be heeded. To ignore his advice is to take risks with people’s lives.