A handful of foreign inmates are growing increasingly frustrated as their long-standing applications to transfer to prisons in their home countries receive no reply.

I don’t want to be here or be a burden on the Maltese government. And Malta doesn’t want me here either

More than a dozen inmates complained that, despite having applied for a prison transfer several months – and, in some cases, years – ago, they were still none the wiser about their future.

It is customary for foreign inmates sentenced to serve time in Malta to request a transfer to their home countries. They cite several reasons for this, not least proximity to their families and language difficulties.

But successful prison transfers tend to be the exception rather than the rule, with just nine prisoners having been successfully transferred since 2007.

Each prisoner at the correctional facility is estimated to cost taxpayers about €50 a day, or more than €18,000 for every year behind bars.

Nigerian Joseph Feilazoo said he had applied for a prison transfer in March 2010, shortly after receiving a 12-year sentence for drug trafficking, He said he never heard anything about his request since.

“I applied for transfer to Spain, where I lived with my girlfriend and child. But I’d apply for Nigeria too if there was an embassy I could contact. At least, I’d be able to see my family every now and again. Over here, I have nobody.”

A letter he sent in June 2011 to the authorities remained answered, he said. “I don’t want to be here or be a burden on the Maltese government. And Malta doesn’t want me here either. I’ve done everything I was told to do but am still in the dark.”

Fellow inmate Enrique Nunez Correa found himself in a similar quandary. Hailing from Guinea-Bissau but also having Portuguese residence, he is serving a nine-year sentence, also for drug-related charges.

“I was told there was no chance of being sent to Guinea-Bissau, so I applied for transfer to Portugal. That was well over a year ago and I never heard anything back. Every time I ask for information, I’m told to wait.”

It was a similar story for Nigerian inmate John Udag, who is five years into a 20-year sentence for drug trafficking.

“I apply for a prison transfer every year but never receive a reply. I’m begging to be sent away but nobody wants to help us.”

A Home Affairs Ministry spokesman said that a prison transfer was not an automatic right and that agreements between both sending and receiving states had to be in place for a transfer to be possible.

Disparities in the length of a sentences for the same crime could also hinder prison transfers, the spokesman said.

This was the case for Benedict Nyumah, a Dutch inmate whose sentence in Malta was 10 months longer than it would be in Holland.

He said that while Holland had accepted his transfer request, the Maltese authorities had not.

“The Dutch Attorney General said I could make 10 months of community service to make up for the discrepancy but the Maltese prison did not accept,” he said, adding he had received four rejections for the same reason.

Fellow inmate Moussa Sysavane was caught in the same predicament. A German citizen, Mr Sysavane said his request to transfer to a German prison was being blocked by the Attorney General in Malta.

“My sentence here in Malta runs until 2017. In Germany, I would be released in 2016. The German authorities said I could make up the difference in community service but the suggestion was rejected by the Maltese,” he said.

The prison transfer process is lengthy and involves significant bureaucratic stages.

Inmates must first send their request in writing to the Home Affairs Ministry, which hands it over to the prisons director at Corradino Correctional Facility.

Having first consulted the Police Commissioner, the director compiles a dossier and passes it on to the ministry’s permanent secretary. The permanent secretary hands the dossier to the Attorney General. Once satisfied, the Attorney General refers the case to the relevant embassy, which sends it to its respective country’s Justice Ministry for a decision.

At all stages of the process, the authorities can send the dossier back to the prisons director for supplementary information.

Bureaucratic mishaps are common enough for prisoner advocacy NGO Mid-Dlam Għad-Dawl to warn would-be applicants that “files have the loathsome tendency of getting lost, or skulk at the bottom of paper piles”.

About 38 per cent of the 585 inmates at CCF are foreign, with 82 EU nationals and 140 coming from third countries.