According to the Times of Malta, the Home Affairs Minister Byron Camilleri said that foreigners applying for working visas in Malta will have to take a test which includes the Maltese language. This is good news, but the reform focuses more on a general knowledge test than on the Maltese language itself. The Maltese language is just one of many subjects the applicant is required to know about and thus gives the impression of serving as a bureaucratic exercise.
If the Minister was serious about this, the proper way to go about this would have been to include Maltese Language certification as a prerequisite for a working-visa. All the general and cultural aspects that the government wants to instill into the foreign workers before coming to Malta can be transferred via the learning of language. In addition, the learning of Maltese language abroad could create a new industry via foreign Maltese language schools.
Instead, the Minister is issuing a half-baked reform. Obviously the test should be made in Maltese in the first place, but this will probably not be the case if the applicants will be responding to general questions and only need a basic familiarity with the Maltese language. In addition – foreigners are still paying brokers in order to get working visas and all of this money could instead go to foreign Maltese language schools in which foreign workers would be educated both in Maltese language and Maltese culture.
Byron Camilleri hasn’t done one proper reform since he was Minister (an Army base got robbed by young criminals under his tenure).
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