Maybe I’m missing something, but how is placing the onus on notaries meant to sort out the mess which has been created in the granting of residential status to TCNs due to years of mismanagement (and allegedly, more corruption).

Up until now the procedure has been this: a rental contract is signed between a landlord and a tenant which includes the latter’s passport or ID Card details and the names of those residing at the premises. The contract then has to be registered with the Housing Authority on their portal and the contract is vetted and approved. Proof that they have a legitimate place to live allows a TCN to have their residential status and work permit renewed by Identity Malta.

Of course all this depends on the premise that, throughout the process, all the details being provided are true. But the news that people are being registered on empty properties (or on other people’s properties with owners even receiving mail with foreign names containing PIN numbers from Identity Malta) has thrown the entire sector into disarray. Today it was reported that multiple names were registered on the offices of construction magnates and this was only discovered because Times reporters went physically to the properties in question and knocked.

“Around 50 individuals are falsely declared on government databases as residing in a building owned by Mark Agius, on Triq Qasam San Ġorġ, Victoria, next to the back door of his supermarket – Ta’ Dirjanu food store.”

Now, I know for a fact that no-one from Housing or Identity Malta has ever actually verified that a named tenant or tenants are actually living at the property listed on the application form. Or that it is actual a rental property rather than an empty home which is under renovation. They simply take your word for it. That has been amply proven by the story today (no one at Housing noticed this was actually an office building – to them, an address is an address). So how is dragging notaries or lawyers into this meant to work? Are they meant to take responsibility if what they have been told is not true? Or is Identity Malta expecting the legal profession to do its job by checking who is living where?

I don’t blame the Notarial Chamber for opposing this half-baked attempt at squashing this abuse. It stated that notaries “should only sign a rental agreement if all parties have signed in their presence and provided identification via an identity card, driver’s license, or passport,” the council said in a statement. They added that notaries cannot guarantee the title of a property without doing the related research.

As usual, instead of going straight to the source of the abuse (in some cases landlords and developers and in other cases, whoever is involved in this fraud within the Government entities) the “solution” is to start by picking on the victims of this elaborate mess – the hapless TCNs who are given a random address. A large number of the TCN workforce (which is considerable) is now in a state of panic since this newfangled idea came into effect on 1 September. Without a notarised lease, their work permit and residential status won’t be renewed.

The absurdity and unnecessary bureaucracy of the whole idea has been laid bare for all to see …all it took was for a few Times journalists to do some legwork. The easiest way to combat corruption and abuse is not to create more red tape and expenses for the innocent parties, but to look at the evidence in existing databases (which should all be centralised so that addresses and ID card numbers can be cross-checked with each other). Where something is flagged which looks suspicious then officials need to leave their offices and go check it out for themselves.

I’m still curious though about the “phantom tenants” who presumably are on the island working…if they are not living at the named properties, where are they living? And under what conditions?