Maltese employers ‘take advantage’ of incentives for former drug users

Maltese employers have been singled out as taking advantage of schemes aimed at encouraging the employment of former drug addicts by taking part in schemes that offer initial financial incentives to companies to employ rehabilitated drug users, only to axe them when the subsidy periods end.

According to a report published earlier this month by the European Monitoring Centre for Drugs and Drug Addiction, an EU agency: “Experience with this approach (offering financial incentives to employers in the form of wage subsidies and tax reductions) in Malta highlights some of its limitations: if employment is at the discretion of the employer, then employers may take advantage of the first few months of subsidy and terminate the employment once the subsidy is removed”.

The report, entitled Social reintegration and employment: evidence and interventions for drug users in treatment, notes that similar schemes offering financial incentives to employers through wage subsidies and tax reductions are also available in Greece, Hungary and Austria but the report singles out Maltese employers as being particularly mercenary in this respect.

The finding follows a report by Malta’s National Audit Office (NAO), released earlier this month, which found that the employment of former problem drug users was a “clear concern”.

An analysis of data on the employment history of such people revealed a number of concerns, such as the fact that over half of those clients registered with the Special Cases Unit at the Employment and Training Corporation between 2007 and February 2012 had never been in employment during that period.

The number of drug-related offences coming before the courts has increased from 70 in 1999 to over 1,200 in 2012.

The NAO said it is also concerned with the number of people registered as former substance abusers attending training courses, which progressively and drastically fell as the length of time they had been registered with the Unit increased.

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