Accessing the Portal 

Access to the portal is permitted on a temporary basis, and we reserve the right to withdraw or amend the information and/or services we provide on the portal without notice (see below). We will use reasonable endeavours to ensure that the site is available 24 hours, 7 days a week. We will not, however, be liable if for any reason the portal is unavailable at any time or for any period. From time to time, we may restrict access to some parts of the portal, or the entire portal, to users who have registered.

If you choose, or you are provided with, a user identification code, password, or any other piece of information as part of our security procedures, you must treat such information as confidential, and you must not disclose it to any third party. We have the right to disable any user identification code or password, whether chosen by you or allocated by us, at any time, if in our opinion you have failed to comply with any of the provisions of these terms and conditions of use.

When using the portal, you must refrain from making or doing anything listed under the “Prohibited Uses” section of these terms and conditions. You are responsible for making all arrangements necessary for you to have access to the portal. You are also responsible for ensuring that all persons who access the portal through your internet connection are aware of these terms and conditions, and that they comply with them.

Use of the Portal

These terms and conditions regulate the access to information posted on the portal and related services in particular portal notifications and posting of comments and/or the use of the portal for the purpose of submitting application forms available on the portal to the relevant ministries, departments or other entities within the Government of Malta.

Automated Notifications and Comments: This portal may offer the service of automated notification on information updates within the portal. Notifications will be delivered via the email address provided by the user. The automated notifications and comments feature are available to users that have obtained a Maltese Electronic Identity (e-ID). For more information about the e-ID, you may visit www.mygov.mt.

Prohibited Uses

You may use the portal only for lawful purposes. You may not use the portal:

In any way that breaches any applicable law or regulation. In any way that is unlawful or fraudulent, or has any unlawful or fraudulent purpose or effect. In any way which may infringe our rights or the rights of third parties; To post, transmit or disseminate any information on or via the Portal which is obscene, defamatory or in any way harmful; To obtain or attempt to obtain unauthorised access to the Portal; To alter, deface or interfere with the Portal in any way; To knowingly transmit any data, send or upload any material that contains viruses, Trojan horses, worms, time-bombs, keystroke loggers, spyware, adware or any other harmful programs or similar computer code designed to adversely affect the operation of any computer software or hardware

Attempt to gain unauthorized access to any portion or feature of the services, or any other systems or networks connected to the services or to any Government of Malta server, or to any of the services offered on or through the portal, by hacking, password “mining” or any other illegitimate means; To probe,  scan  or  test  the  vulnerability  of  the  portal, including the services  or  any  network connected to the portal, nor breach the security or authentication measures on the portal, including the services or any network connected to the portal, including the services;

To reverse look-up, trace or seek to trace the source of any information on any other user of or visitor to the portal, or any other customer of the Government of Malta, including any service account not owned by you or exploit the portal or any service or information made available or offered by or through the portal, in any way where the purpose is to reveal any information, including but not limited to personal identification  or information, other than  your own information, as provided for by the portal or any service provided through the portal; To forge headers or otherwise manipulate identifiers in order to disguise the origin of any message or transmittal you send to the Government of Malta on or through the portal or any service offered on or through the portal. You may not pretend that you are, or that you  represent,  someone  else,  or  impersonate  any  other  person  or  entity  unless authorised.

We reserve the right to disclose your personal information to any competent law enforcement authorities in the event of a breach of the preceding paragraph.

You also agree: Not to reproduce, duplicate, copy or re-sell any part of the portal in contravention of the provisions of these terms and conditions. Not to access without authority, interfere with, damage or disrupt: (i) any part of the portal; (ii) any equipment or network on which the portal is stored; (iii) any software used in the provision of the portal; or (iv) any equipment or network or software owned or used by any third party.

Not to use any “page-scrape”, “robot”, “spider” or other automatic device, program, algorithm or methodology, or any similar or equivalent manual process, to access, acquire, copy or monitor any portion of the services or any content provided through this portal, or in any way reproduce or circumvent the navigational structure or presentation of the services or any content, to obtain or attempt to obtain any materials, documents or information through  any  means  not  purposely  made  available  through  the  portal. We reserve the right to bar any such activity. Not to take any action that imposes an unreasonable or disproportionately large load on the infrastructure of the portal or Government of Malta systems or networks, or any systems or networks connected to the portal.

Not to use any device, software or routine to interfere or attempt to interfere with the proper working of the portal, including the services, or any transaction being conducted on the portal with any other person or entity using the portal, including the services.

Links to other Portals

Where the portal contains links to other sites and resources provided by third parties, these links are provided for your information only. We have no control over the contents of those sites or resources, and accept no responsibility for them or for any loss or damage that may arise from your use of them.

Links to this Portals

You may link to the portal, provided you do so in a way that is fair and legal and does not damage our reputation or take advantage of it, but you must not establish a link in such a way as to suggest any form of association, approval or endorsement on our part where none exists. We reserve the right to withdraw linking permission without notice. The portal must not be framed on any other site.

Intellectual Property Rights

We are the owner or the licensee of all intellectual property rights in the portal, and in the material published on it. Those works are protected by copyright laws and treaties around the world. All such rights are reserved. You may print off copies, and may download extracts, of any page(s) from the portal for your personal reference and you may draw the attention of others within your organisation to material posted on the portal. You must not modify the paper or digital copies of any materials you have printed off or downloaded in any way, and you must not use any illustrations, photographs, video or audio sequences or any graphics separately from any accompanying text. If you print off, copy or download any part of the portal in breach of these terms and conditions of use, your right to use the portal will cease immediately and you must, at our option, return or destroy any copies of the materials you have made.

Reliance of Information Posted

Commentary and other materials posted on the portal are not intended to amount to advice on which reliance should be placed. We therefore disclaim all liability and responsibility arising from any reliance placed on such materials by any visitor to the portal, or by anyone who may be informed of any of its contents.

Changes of the Portal

We aim to update the portal regularly, and may change the content at any time. If the need arises, we may suspend access to the portal, or close it indefinitely. Any of the material on the portal may be out of date at any given time, and we are under no obligation to update such material.

Cookies

A session cookie is a piece of data which is stored on your computer and which expires once you close down your internet browser. The portal uses session cookies to temporarily identify user actions when using the portal, including the services. A session cookie is information stored in your browser’s cache which is only available to the portal for the duration of your browser’s lifetime window (session) when accessing the portal or the services and no other site can request this information. By using this portal or the services you consent to the storage of cookies on your personal computer. To ensure that the information stored by the session cookie is cleared from cache on your personal computer, it is highly recommended that you close your browser when you finish using the portal or the services.

Retention Policy

The Retention Policy outlines the retention requirements for the various categories of documentation held within HPDPD Data that needs to be destroyed after the noted timeframes will be disposed of in an efficient manner ensuring that such information is no longer available within HPDPD

Security

We will not be liable for any loss or damage caused by a distributed denial-of-service attack, viruses or other technologically harmful material that may infect your computer equipment, computer programs, data or other proprietary material due to your use of the portal or to your downloading of any material posted on it, or on any portal linked to it.

Limitation of Liability

The material displayed on the portal is provided without any guarantees, conditions or warranties as to its accuracy. To the extent permitted by law, we, any identified contributors (including entities within Government of Malta) and third parties connected to us hereby expressly exclude: All conditions, warranties and other terms which might otherwise be implied by law.

Any liability for any direct, indirect or consequential loss or damage incurred by any user in connection with the portal or in connection with the use, inability to use, or results of the use of the portal, any portals linked to it and any materials posted on it, including, without limitation any liability for: loss of income or revenue; loss of business; loss of profits or contracts; loss of anticipated savings; loss of data; loss of goodwill; wasted management or office time; and for any other loss or damage of any kind, however arising and whether caused by tort (including negligence), breach of contract or otherwise, even if foreseeable.

This does not affect our liability for any other liability which cannot be excluded or limited under applicable law.

Disclaimer of Warranties

We give you no warranty or assurance. We declare and you acknowledge that all implied warranties and conditions are excluded to the maximum extent permitted by law. You should note in particular: The services provided through this portal are not intended to constitute a definitive or complete statement of the law on any subject. The services provided through this portal are not intended to constitute legal advice in any specific situation. The services provided through this portal include archived information and resources, which may be incorrect or out of date. The services provided through this portal, and our means of delivering it may be incompatible with your software or computer configuration. We may change or withdraw part or all of any services provided through this portal at our discretion.

Compliance Status

The Health Promotion and Disease Prevention Directorate (HPDPD) is committed to making its online services accessible to all. We have a national and global user base and are dedicated to continuously improving accessibility of our services with a focus on the anti-discrimination requirements of the Equal Opportunities Act (Persons with Disability) of 2000 (EOA).​​

Compliance Process

The HPDP portal is designed to work with Internet Explorer 11 (using the latest version of Silverlight) and the most recent two versions of Firefox and Chrome browsers. As part of this effort, HPDP adheres to accessibility standard EN310549 and WCAG2.0 guidelines. Our online resources and products are evaluated both manually and programmatically for conformance to WCAG 2.0 Level AA guidelines. The HPDP portal in particular is designed to work well and be accessible when being accessed with suitably updated hardware and software products.

Further recognizing that adherence to standards and guidelines, cannot on its own ensure that a product is accessible, HPDP also carries out usability evaluations in collaboration with persons with disability, so as to gather necessary feedback. We also strive to implement accessibility for information channels that are provided via third party platforms wherever possible, like for example our Youtube or Facebook pages.

Accessibility Measures

The HPDP portal does not make use of font, magnification and colour modification widgets. This is because we believe that this functionality is already integrated in most web browsers or is available via different add-ons and plugins which different users are free to customise to their needs. As a result these arbitrary user customisations are available for most portals, not only that of the Foundation. In order to allow for this level of customisation, we seek to maximise compatibility with these user modifications.

As part of and in addition to the above mentioned guidelines, the HPDP portal implements the following accessibility features:

• Maintain a consistent HTML Heading hierarchy and information layout across different web pages.
• Information content is organised into HTML lists wherever applicable.
• Deployed a link focus highlighting script in order to provide visual cues for exclusive keyboard users.
• Add image title, alt tag and caption wherever this information is relevant and useful.
• Maximise colour contrast for text where applicable.
• Actual link text is descriptive enough to inform user where the link points to.
• Implement all external links so that they open into new browser tabs.

Inaccessible Content

HPDP is not aware of specific inaccessible content or accessibility issues on its portal. If you identify such content, kindly let us know via the contact details provided below. Should such an instance arise HPDP’s goal is to create an Accessibility Remediation Roadmap (ARR). The ARR describes the steps needed to help identify an accessibility issue and bring the product into compliance with the EOA, including the anticipated schedule for completion of this goal. If you identify such content, kindly let us know via the contact details provided below.

Feedback and Contact Details

Inevitably, we won’t always get it right, the more services and resources we place online, the more likely it may be to miss some problems but we remain committed to addressing any access issues promptly. And that is where we would like your help.

If you experience any difficulties in accessing our portal, or have trouble using any aspect of the portal, we would like you to let us know. You may contact HPDP by  sending an e-mail to workpermit.idcu@gov.mt​.