‘I Would Not Come Back to Work There’: Indian Waiter Escapes Terrible Working Conditions In Malta
Kiran Puttalingaiah – an Indian national who came to Malta and had a series of harrowing experiences with employers in Gozo – has returned safely to his wife and child in Mandya, India.
“I reached India on the 16th of February. I’m with my family. After coming back to India, I’m so peaceful, I feel so safe, I’m so happy. I don’t know how to express how happy I am to be here with family. I was stuck in Malta without anything,” he told Lovin Malta.
Fundraising efforts made by Patricia Graham’s EU Nationals and Residents Advisory Group eventually managed to get Kiran away from his improvised garage residence, and onto a flight home.
Graham initially got involved in this work when campaigning to ensure that all residents in Malta could access the residential rates for utilities.
This work led many third-country nationals to her, and she began to understand that third-country nationals in Malta are being routinely exploited and mistreated – on a massive scale.
Kiran had come to Malta to continue his career as a waiter, but arrived to find that the job he’d been approved for no longer existed. Instead, he was forced to work off the books for a series of abusive employers, who proved themselves unwilling to pay the salaries their employees were due.
“Until today he hasn’t yet paid my salary. My former boss should not do to other people what he did to me. This kind of behaviour creates a very bad image of Malta to third-country nationals.”
Kiran still holds some slim hope that he will be paid just shy of €2,000 he is owed. Despite this, he has already found new work – in a return to his previous industry.
“I got an opportunity at a US company Royal Caribbean Cruises as a waiter.”
Kiran had left the cruise industry because despite the comparative reliability of fairly decent treatment and consistent pay aboard cruise ships, he wished to be able to live closer to his family.
This is not a possibility for most labourers aboard cruise liners, but Kiran’s experience in Malta showed that bringing family here – to face exploitation and racism – would not necessarily have been better than being apart.
“The reputation of the island is going. People are very scared to come to the island to work. It’s damaging to the country.”
Kiran explained his perspective that part of the problem for third country nationals in Malta was that they were being misled by marketing. He shared information about Indian and Nepali run YouTube channels promoting Malta as a place where third country nationals could live and work in prosperous conditions.
“There are so many people who dream of working in Malta. They should be demotivated with the truth. There are Indian people who are posting videos on YouTube, giving false propaganda videos of Maltese life. They’re doing it for likes, comments, views, I don’t know what, but it’s not the reality. That was not the reality, unfortunately.”
Some of these misleading videos may be being posted by hiring agencies which stand to make money from third-country nationals employing their services to find work in Malta – regardless of labour conditions.
Kiran expressed his hope that more people would share their stories about the reality of working in Malta – including the video above as an important watch for third country nationals considering their shot at the Maltese dream.
“I regret the experience in Malta. It’s one of the worst experiences I’ve had in my life. I would not come back to work in Malta, only through the cruise line to visit, but I would not come and work there.”
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