English and Maltese language tuition should be made mandatory for migrants with humanitarian protection who were seeking employment.
This is one in a series of recommendations made in the closing conference of an EU funded project organised by AWAS, in collaboration with the ETC.
Two other recommendations are that child care facilities and employer initiatives be extended to refugees and beneficiaries of humanitarian protection.
The project started in 2011 and involved the creation of employment support offices at Marsa and Hal Far open centres.
These offices provided a one-stop shop where beneficiaries of protection could be matched with potential employers.
More than 800 people registered with this scheme, and 88 companies submitted vacancies. In total, 194 people were engaged, most in entry level jobs such as labourers and cleaners.
Most applicants were Somali, male, and aged between 20 and 29.
It was noted that the language barrier was the main obstacle at all stages in the process with a number of migrants bringing along friends to aid communications.
The project coordinators called for greater police enforcement and surveillance of illegal employment which, they said, was eating at the potential of such projects.
They also suggested that any such future project should include compulsory job skills training, the assistance of cultural mediators and require prospective employees to only obtain an employment licence once a potential employee was identified.
The €180,000 project was 75 per cent financed by the European Commission.
The project also included the publication so an employment guide in various languages, ranging from English to Somali.
Home Affairs ministry parliamentary assistant Beppe Fenech Adami said the project was “proof” that the government had gone beyond an emergency response to dealing with asylum seekers.
Dr Fenech Adami said that Malta’s integration efforts – such as this project - were “regularly misinterpreted or ignored”. He said that the importance was to keep a “balance” between integration and efforts to resettle asylum seekers or repatriate them where possible.