Social benefits under review

An evaluation of social benefit schemes is underway to determine whether there is need for change, the director general of the Department of Social Security said yesterday.

Joe Camilleri said that although no specific changes have yet been identified, the department had singled out the schemes to be looked into.

"Today's focus lies in encouraging people to continue working and getting more women out to work. We need to evaluate the existing schemes within this scenario," he said. The director general, who took up the post two months ago, said it was imperative to determine whether social benefits were in fact helping the country reach these goals and to fine tune them so that they would address society's needs.

Mr Camilleri said it was important to strike a balance between giving the unemployed a decent quality of life and not serving as an incentive for them to stay jobless. He recognised that there are people who argue it does not pay them to get a job because this would mean losing out on social benefits.

"We are looking at ways to strike such a balance," he said.

Asked whether social benefits were addressing poverty, Mr Camilleri said:

"There is always the question of whether we are giving too much or too little - that is a dilemma, but I believe social benefits are helping society."

Fraud is one of the department's headaches and something that the Benefit Fraud Unit is trying to iron out.

Last year the unit conducted 928 investigations and recommended the withholding of social benefits in 712 cases.

In 2005, the government saved Lm500,000 following investigations. But is this just the tip of the iceberg?

"You will always have people trying to abuse the system, some unknowingly and others intentionally," he said, adding that the most common cases involved people not declaring their full income or falsely claiming to live in uninhabitable places.

One case that particularly struck Mr Camilleri - showing to what lengths some people go - involved a family claiming benefits of a dead relative, with somebody faking an identity card and posing as the dead person in front of a review board.

The investigations section has been separated from the social benefits unit to allow it to focus on ferreting out fraudsters.

On the energy benefits that came into effect this year to compensate for the electricity surcharge, Mr Camilleri said people would be able to benefit even if the bill was not in their name.

Around 11,000 households were covered by the previous rebates on electricity - which were only given if the beneficiary was also the account holder. The new scheme will benefit around 30,000 people.