Issue link: https://maltatoday.uberflip.com/i/1327039
7 maltatoday | SUNDAY • 10 JANUARY 2021 NEWS foreign for less than 16 nights every month are eligible for €782.94. Work on public holidays or rest days should be paid double the daily rate and any overtime over and above the eight-hour day has to be paid at a 1.5 rate. But research by industrial re- lations expert Manwel Debono suggests that 2% of the Filipino working community in Malta do not have work contracts. The EU study also refers to in- terviews with Filipino workers by Raisa Galea published in the Isles of the Left showing that Filipino live-in carers "usual- ly work six days per week, 24 hours per day, with one day off a week, and have one month's leave per year". Live-in carers in Malta typically also receive a paid trip home once a year. The study suggests that in Malta and Cyprus, unde- clared work appears to have been avoided "by the relatively straightforward option of mi- grants obtaining residence per- mits for care work." Allowing live-in care to be paid from public subsidies has also helped in ensuring its reg- ularisation in both Malta and the Netherlands. A 'carer at home' subsidy of €5,200 per year was introduced in Malta in 2017. Other measures undertaken by Malta include the require- ment for wages to be paid by bank transfer and the exclusion of employers with undeclared workers from future public procurement. While in Romania, Slova- kia and Slovenia, the majority of the LTC workforce is em- ployed in the public sector in Austria, Greece, Malta and the Netherlands the workforce is entirely or almost entirely con- centrated in the private sector, EU27, about 6.3 million people work in LTC, which is 3.2% of the EU's entire workforce. The LTC workforce as a share of the entire workforce ranges from 0.3% in Greece to 7.1% in Sweden. In Malta LTC workers constitute 3.5% of the entire workforce. Focusing on this sector is crucial "to address poverty and precarious working con- ditions," the report concludes. Moreover the COVID-19 crisis is expected to "accelerate the move away from large-scale residential LTC". But it is hard to predict the impact of the crisis as "few- er are signing up to work in close-contact professions." And the care user's home as work environment remains "hard to regulate and control". Moreover live-in care, where the LTC worker lives in the care receiver's home, is associ- ated with risks around working conditions and quality of care. Regularisation can be facili- tated by attractive registration procedures, however "if good access to a flexible range of high-quality LTC services is offered, live-in care is rarely needed". jdebono@mediatoday.com.mt • Malta has 209 home- based care workers, 174 of which are Filipinos • 87% are women • They are paid €10,000 gross salary annually, apart from perks • Live-in carers (over 16 nights a month) are paid €799.23 monthly