The Council of the Malta Union of Midwives has issued an open letter to the Prime Minister, in which it voices the union’s concerns on the “substantial number of foreign nurses leaving the country.”

The letter is shown in full below:

“MUMN is concerned on the substantial number of foreign nurses leaving the country to the detriment of the whole Health Service in Malta. MUMN is requesting your intervention to address this serious problem since most of the issues do not pertain to the Health Division.

The Health Division made several attempts during 2020 to address the issue of the foreign nurses working in Malta but failed miserably due to foreseen and unforeseen circumstances.

The issues written below are summoned in a letter of a petition signed by hundreds of Third Country Nationals. MUMN is requesting a meeting with your office to address these issues to prevent a major crisis in the Health Care Sector.

Currently we are in a situation where in all Health Institutions; the nurse’s shortage is affecting the service being offered to our patients and the wellbeing of our staff.

MUMN is requesting that measures being introduced by other countries who are poaching Maltese TCN nurses such as financial remuneration, residential permits and citizenship be introduced also in Malta.”

Letter from the nurses of ‘Third Country Nationals’ to the Prime Minister

“The main problem lies with the frustrating family reunification process and remuneration.

We are working and living here in Malta for a very long time. We are front liners who suffer from psychological and physical strain because of the current COVID-19 pandemic, however we lack the much-needed family support during these difficult times.

What we are asking for is our basic human right. We are financially unstable and cannot afford to support our spouses independently and satisfy all other requirements and are requesting to have them live with us in Malta. We pay high accommodation rents and some of us cannot even take a bank loan to buy domicile property.

However, we continue to wait for months, even more than a year in some cases without any decision or concrete updates on our applications.

Many of our colleagues are leaving Malta to England or Ireland because they are having difficulties or no timeframe on the process for their families to join them in Malta. Some of them are afraid to speak up thinking it might have a negative impact on their application process.

Some of our issues are.

1. Family Reunification – Spouses not being able to join us here in Malta (I have attached the receipt Identity Malta provided me and Jan Mohammed when we applied for family reunification. We have been waiting for 7 months and 1 year respectively).

2. Residence permits issuing delays. Sometimes medical emergencies, or funerals occur back home, and the residence cards are not issued on time. And it is very hard to get in touch with someone who can understand the situation and deal with the case on an individual basis.

3. Many children of working nurses are getting massive delays in issuing their residence permit cards. I have attached one of many examples (in that particular case the parents are still waiting for their child’s ID card from October of 2019).

4. When renewing our work permits, we are required to go for blood tests and chest X rays on a yearly basis. We are allowed to perform the mentioned tests at private clinics only. This is unfair as we pay high monthly taxes and national insurance as well. We believe we should be able to take the tests at any government medical centre free of charge. Yearly renewal amounts to almost 430 euros.

5. We had one case where a nurse tried a depressing number of times to contact Identity Malta to get the work permit issued, with the answer always being “under process”, until the frustration was over the roof and an email was sent to the Prime Minister, only then Identity Malta issued the ID card. Do we need every time to email the prime minister for something that should be straight forward?

6. Due to the above situations and the fact that we cannot save much, some cannot take bank loans to buy home properties.

I am sure you can understand our frustration and constant struggle all those years. We love Malta and would love to continue working here and enjoying the country. However, we would like to do that with our families. We are not emotionless robots; we need our spouses’ support and presence of our children. We also need to be remunerated as our colleagues who are being offered better wages and allowances.

Thank You for listening to us and your continuous hard work for our professions.”

 

Permalink: MUMN voices concerns over number of foreign nurses leaving the country