Poverty and injustice

The interview with Angela Abela and Fr Charles Tabone (The Meaning Of Poverty, May 12) didn't seem to have created much interest at least in this paper's letters columns. Personally, I found it very interesting, informative and detailed as regards poverty in Malta and what can be done about it.

Although one must accept the fact that generally the standard of living has gone up in recent years and many families can afford to own their house with all commodities and enjoy an annual holiday, still there is a substantial percentage of the population who live below the poverty line - even if not everybody agrees with this statistic.

According to Dr Abela and Fr Tabone, as many as 60,000 Maltese - 15 per cent of the population - and an alarming 20 per cent of children are living below the poverty line. It is interesting to note that, according to Eurostat criteria, Lm2,036 is how much money a Maltese person needs every year to live adequately and not be considered poor. That means less than Lm40 a week. Though Lm40 a week are now a windfall, the real problem starts when another person depends on the same income.

According to research by these senior lecturers (Dr Abela, a clinical psychologist and family therapist and Fr Tabone, a sociologist), they found some alarming facts as regards the poverty situation in Malta and consequently presented some concrete proposals which the government should act upon immediately.

I'm not going to repeat what they discovered in their analysis, although one must be alerted to some pitiful situations they encountered when interviewing families and children.

One particular case which I found very shameful and distressing in this day and age is where the mother is not able to afford to send her children on a school outing or buy their books and stationery. The question of spending Lm20 on medicines out of a miserly weekly wage of Lm55 is also very worrisome.

Well, here I want to pinpoint some other points which make life miserable for some unfortunates. Take a couple of poor pensioners who have to feed and clothe an unemployed sick son or daughter.

How are they going to manage to buy the needed medicine? Now here lies a great injustice because, if the son/daughter lives on his/her own, then the government supports them with some relief money, but living with their pensioner parents there is no relief whatsoever and they are supposed to be cared for by their old sick parents. Surely something ought to be done to address this anomaly.

Another injustice is where rich diabetic people are issued with the pink card which entitles them to all medicines free of charge, whereas others who live on their low wage or pension and suffer mental illness or some other chronic ailment are denied the pink card - sometimes because their wage/pension tops the ceiling by a few cents!

One must agree that the cost of medicine goes up every year and the government must find the money to buy this medicine and keep our hospitals and clinics up to date. So why is the government against rich people paying for the health service? Rich people can afford to pay at least a nominal fee for say a bypass or any other major operation. If I'm correct, Eddie Eenech Adami had suggested - after being operated upon for heart problems - that, as heart surgery is very expensive, those who can afford it should contribute something.

I agree and this is how it should be if we want to sustain the service and give the best for free to those who really cannot afford the expense.