[WATCH] Malta ‘cannot offer’ migrants opportunities – George Vella

Malta cannot afford to continue supporting migrants from war-torn countries in its over-crowded detention camps, foreign minister George Vella has told CNN.

Vella claimed that migrants were not "helping themselves" because they broke toilets and "smear the place" inside the detention centres.

Malta's detention centres have long been the bane of the island, heavily criticised by international human rights organisations and the Council of Europe's human rights commissioner.

"They don't care for the facilities they have... we cannot afford to carry on looking after all these numbers, and utilizing our resources," Vella replied when asked what the government can do to improve living conditions in the detention camp.

"We cannot offer these people the opportunities for which they left their countries and risked their lives to get a better life, many of them don't want to come to Malta, they come by chance as the boat drifts."

Vella said he wanted asylum seekers who are given protection to be able to be relocated, through a system that takes into account proportionality, to other EU member states. "We sincerely believe that given our size and our density of population, if you compare, we are taking a bigger strain proportionally than all the other countries in the European Union," Vella said.

Malta has received over €100 million in migration funds since becoming an EU member state.

Vella said that better border management on the eastern side of Libya, which borders Sudan, was needed, and that more help was needed for countries of origin.