Here is an update from new Maltese arrival Ali as she wades through the red tape to get her documents sorted out:
As promised, here is part two, finally, of my journey of getting paperwork done in Malta. Settling into my new life and new job means I’ve been a little busy of late, not to mention the visitors we’ve had already – turns out your friends and family don’t mind you immigrating so much when they can visit and have a free holiday!
Looking back now, getting my social security number was fairly easy, bar the photocopying blip. Armed with that piece of paper I head to Valletta, or Floriana to be more precise, not far from where you pick up the Police Conduct Certificate. There are a number of government buildings called Block A, Block B, C, etc and Block 1, Block 2, 3 etc, and you would think they would be laid out in a logical order, A next to B, but no… I had to decipher the maps and headed to Block 3, or could have been 4 or A, who knows, but it was packed with a large queue of people so I figured I must be in the right place.
Armed with my bottle of water and photocopies of all of my paperwork (don’t leave home without these things!) I waited patiently until I got to the window, only to be told I was in the wrong building; I needed Block 1. So off I trundled and found Block 1 and clearly looking a bit confused (because there wasn’t a small riot happening outside the entrance) an older gentleman asked me if he could help. Unsure of if he worked there or not, I took my chances and said that I was looking to get a tax code and that I’d moved here from the UK. “In that door,” he tells me, “fill in the form.”
I go inside and find the form, I fill it out and then what? There is no one around, no bell to press and no queue to join, so I pop my head outside and the friendly man is there. “Err, what do I do now?” I ask. He comes inside, points at a wooden letter box and says, “Put the form in there and go to the beach.” Right you are Sir!
Sure enough my tax code arrived by post a week later.
Update on the Social Security number. Having ‘been there, done that’ I sent my partner off to get his SS number only to be told you can only do it online now at www.socialsecurity.gov.mt . It arrived, by email, three days later and we even had a text to notify us that they had emailed it.
Next step, the ID card.
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