Malta has long advertised itself as an exceptional destination for students from all over Europe who want to learn English. Malta advertises itself as the country of host families who genuinely care for the students under their care and ensure that young persons are looked after by families. This is what heads of families and guardians and young persons have been made to believe by the authorities in Malta.
GRTU is proud to represent Host families and to have obtained for them a fiscal condition that makes them willing to work and practice their professionalism. Government however through a series of sins of omission has allowed most host families to withdraw, as in spite of GRTU's insistence their activity has been dumped as unsustainable and uneconomic. Now we have the result. Young people are dumped in hotel rooms, apart hotels, self-catering flats, guests houses, anywhere else except in homes hosted by caring families.
So many families feel aggrieved at the way Government has allowed the system that gave Malta the name of such an excellent as a caring destination to crumble under stories of violence, unleashed youth behaviour, bullying, insubordination and vandalism and all that one would expect when adolescents are outside the control of expert guidance, even death. Malta has become a bad name. The victims are the unfortunate youths and parents who believe that Malta hosts their children in caring families. GRTU asks who is responsible for this mess?