The Malta Environmental Health Officers Association is urging the government to take “immediate action such as banning of mass events, closure of clubs and bars, as well starting mandatory swab tests on arrival for incoming travellers as soon as possible.

The Association said in a statement, that “for over 150 days, the Environmental Health Officers were part of the teams of front-liners fighting the war against Covid-19.

“During this period, our EHOs worked hard under challenging conditions, including long hours, self-isolation from their loved ones, changes in working environment, colleagues and also change in duties,” it said.

“Since day one, the Malta Environmental Health Officers Association was behind its members and is very proud of what our members have been through these five months to control the situation” the Association said.

“Last May, we asked the government to be cautious in which regulations were to be lifted; MEHOA was ignored entirely,” it said.

Two months down the line, while the Environmental Health Officers continued carrying out inspections on the quarantined persons and carrying checks on the re-opened establishments to ensure the mitigation measures were adhered to, “Malta is facing the 2nd wave of Covid-19,” it said.

The Association argued that “with the increase in numbers once again, the Environmental Health Officers have their work landscape changed again. Workload has drastically increased at the expense of the Environmental Health Officers and the other front-liners.”

Environmental Health Officers are limited in numbers, “and they are putting their lives at risk to provide the necessary services to protect Public health,” the Association added.

It went on to say that, “with this second wave, our officers are also performing inspections till late night/early morning in establishments to ensure compliance with mitigation measures and wearing of masks, apart from checks on quarantined people.”

“With this increase in cases, it is also evident that there is a need to increase human resources or improve work practices in several areas such as swabbing and contact tracing as the backlog is evident.”

It stressed that “there is also definitely a need to ease our Officers who are now feeling the stress of long hours of work for all these months.”

“Genuine appreciation of our daily work is the minimum that one expects after all the work that has been and is being done,” the MEHOA said.

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