'Poverty is government-induced'

Labour deputy leader for parliamentary affairs Anġlu Farrugia yesterday accused the government of inducing relative poverty in Malta and dragging its feet in the face of three recent events which were exacerbating the situation: reduced children's allowances, withheld supplementary allowances to pensioners and the non-curbing of the ever-growing network of gambling shops.

Speaking during the debate on a Social Affairs Committee report on more social inclusion measures to combat poverty, Dr Farrugia said the government was abusing the system of good governance.

The opposition had already suggested a national conference on the cost of living. Since the introduction of the euro, Labour had been asking the government to set up a price control agency, a suggestion which had been completely ignored only to be accepted two years later.

Dr Farrugia noted that compared to the situation in EU member states, Malta's current circumstances were indeed grave.

The government must hasten to take those decisions which would address the situation. This was bad administration, especially where addressing poverty was concerned.

The situation was disastrous because of a laissez faire attitude insofar as gambling was concerned. The Finance Minister had failed to introduce the promised legislation to control the myriad of gambling shops which had mushroomed throughout the island.

Dr Farrugia said Curia authorities had expressed their concern on gambling. Housewives had easy access to gambling shops and were becoming victims of usury. The government was directly responsible for this state of affairs.

Dr Farrugia said that people had received children's allowance cheques reduced by between 50 and 75 per cent of the normal benefit. The government had said that it would reimburse the difference which was due to a mistake in the system. Was this the real reason, he asked, or was the government so cash-strapped that it did not have the money to pay special benefits? When would this reimbursement be made? People had been eagerly awaiting the allowances to pay their utility bills and rent.

Social assistance beneficiaries, such as pensioners earning more than €9,966 in one year because of bonuses and cost-of-living allowances, were being deprived of their supplementary allowances.

Thousands of pensioners were living in poverty and some were even turning to their children and other family members to borrow money to pay their bills. These people were being administratively discriminated against, he concluded.

Dr Alfred Sant (PL) said he could feel a penchant among speakers to look at current changes and effects of current events to explain the concept of relative poverty. But one of the factors conditioning relative poverty in Malta was bad governance, which was the greatest reason behind the fact that several large social sectors were facing great shortcomings in delivery on the part of government.

The non-delivery of badly-needed services was creating a huge contrast between government and families in a welfare state. Effects of foreign events could only be countered, not controlled. But there were matters of local origin that were creating relative poverty and could indeed be controlled, and the tackling of such matters should be the government's priority.

The first line of control should come from the executive, and if the government failed in this line it would be making life a misery for too many families. Health, education and the plight of senior citizens, among others, immediately came to mind.

Dr Sant said there were also other sectors where economic operators felt that things were falling back because of bad governance.

Malta's health system had been built up over several years. But if a citizen, senior or otherwise, living with a threat of breast cancer without adequate, timely treatment was driven to private practice which it could not afford, this was tantamount to relative poverty.

Having to suffer pain for years on end was relative poverty too. The situation pertinent to breast cancer was also true with regard to knee replacements and other surgical requirements, as well as lack of medicines. There were too many families with unmet needs that must wait or pay up and be pushed into relative poverty.

Did not the government realise that it was failing to deliver on its social contract? These situations had nothing to do with imported factors.

Turning to education, Dr Sant said that it was tantamount to relative poverty too if the state was not delivering the right education package to children all over society.

Statistics comparing education performance in Malta and the rest of Europe were there, not invented. It was useless to blame external factors for illiteracy, for example. The government was in a position to guide and decide, but it should take the necessary measures to get there. Nicely-worded statements could never be enough if timely decisions were not taken.

Senior citizens were justifiably feeling abandoned on account of electoral promises that were not being delivered on, sometimes in a big way. There were too many areas of life that senior citizens could not afford.

Dr Sant said that although it might seem to be unrelated, relative poverty existed even with regard to the environment. With so many environmental promises not delivered on, there were certain strata of society that could feel an erosion of the quality of life even in this sector.

The government could not continue to act as if it were running an enterprise, because this sent out a message of market values and the survival of the fittest. This might please certain big businesses, but it did not make sense in health, education and social security. The government's tunnel vision with regard to full recovery of costs, as with the utility tariffs, no matter what it would do to family life, meant it was nothing but sheer madness in view of the enormous inefficiencies that were pushing utility costs up.

Some families could take such things in their stride, but others could not.

Concluding, Dr Sant said that if the government was serious about tackling relative poverty it should start with things that were effectively under its own control, and recognise that when the social contract packet was not delivered it was contributing directly to relative poverty.

Labour MP Marie Louise Coleiro Preca, who for 10 years shadowed the Social Policy Ministry, said it was gratifying for her that the House was discussing relative poverty. Pushing up those 15 per cent on the lower rung of the ladder also meant pushing upwards the others above them.

She would have liked to see more recent statistics because certain figures were taken from the 2000 Household Budgetary Survey. Nine years would make a whole lot of difference to enable one to make a good stocktaking of the situation. The pity was that such data existed. Also, data that could have been extrapolated from the latest census had not been used.

Two other national action plans, drafted since 2004, against poverty and social exclusion, could also have been referred to.

Dr Coleiro Preca said that social and economic problems were exacerbating the burden of poverty.

Since the introduction of a Commissioner for Children, the precarious situation of children had been underlined. So much so, that children living in the risk of poverty had increased by one percentage point, from 20 per cent in 2000 to 21 per cent five years later.

In a situation of social exclusion depending on social benefits, the government's direction should be solidarity. One had to ensure that taxes addressed this.

The report focussed on defining relative poverty. There were families which were living in subjective poverty because they were living on a certain income but which had one disabled child or one person suffering from a chronic disease for which they were paying medical therapy and care. This led to a situation of economic poverty, with these families living under the national minimum wage.

Dr Coleiro Preca said there were families with members suffering from cancer and who had to spend hundreds of euros regularly to pay for certain medicines.

In education, teachers had to be more conscious of today's realities. Schools had to have multi-disciplinary teams with enough psychologists and social workers to curb problems from an early age.

The government had to embark on prevention programmes. She referred to the hefty increase in utility bills, emphasising that the government had to test its policies through social impact assessments before introducing them.

The Social Affairs Committee should also recommend to the government to take preventive measures and address its policies holistically, ensuring that it would not increase the number of families living in the risk of poverty.

Dr Coleiro Preca said that for the past ten years she had been asking the government to reform the Social Security Act. Families were receiving notices that they were no longer entitled to the Lm26 every quarter in supplementary allowance because they had been given cost-of-living increases, but the ceiling had not increased. There were families that did not qualify for this allowance because their income exceeded the limit by one euro annually.

There were children who did not achieve literacy and numeracy skills at the end of compulsory education, while others were living like robots, striving to meet their scholastic commitments.

The concept of the working poor had been excluded by the committee. There were thousands of workers who were working on contract in the worst possible conditions and did not earn enough to cope with life and give their children enough nutrition and a proper education.

In the report, Dr Angela Abela and Rev. Charles Tabone had also referred to social housing. The concept of social housing was dead today. The government had repeatedly failed to address this issue, which helped to alleviate the plight of the poor and prevent such situations.

Dr Coleiro Preca concluded that it was urgent to review the welfare system so that it would reflect today's reality. She referred to a news story carried in Monday's issue of The Times where a paralysed person was living on his mother's pension and was denied social assistance.

Speaking on Tuesday, Evarist Bartolo (PL) said that if one wanted to help people in poverty, one should think of serious measures to help them break out of the situation.

Referring to Rev. Dr Charles Tabone's and Dr Angela Abela's studies, Mr Bartolo said that the poor's silence helped poverty to remain invisible, with many teachers not even knowing that certain students lived in poverty. While some thought that the poor were lazy, the poor were people who wanted to break out of poverty if they ever had the chance.

Serious and effective measures needed to be taken because poverty was a complex issue. The government was supposed to have such a plan against poverty, but this did not have any precise aim as to how to reduce poverty. There was no good implementation and the voice of the poor was not heard.

Mr Bartolo said that after 18 months of such a plan, the government should make an evaluation of what were the positive and negative aspects.

One of every five children lived in poverty. Together with the aged, children were more susceptible to poverty. While there were 15 per cent who lived in poverty, there were also 15 per cent who lived in the risk of poverty.

Mr Bartolo referred to Rev. Tabone's analysis which showed that even those earning a minimum wage lived in poverty. EU studies showed that Malta was one of a number of countries where the minimum wage did not make up for the increase in the cost of living. Meanwhile, NSO analyses showed that between 2003 and 2007, inequalities in wages had increased.

There had been an increase of 17 per cent in the salaries of high officials. Professionals had increased by 20 per cent. Certain industrial workers in factories had also increased by 20 per cent, but restaurant and hotel workers' wages had increased by only two per cent and those who performed elementary work had increased by three per cent. However, salespersons and people in the retail trade had seen their wages decrease by one per cent.

Mr Bartolo said that with the decrease in children's allowance - a decrease which the government had not explained - people with the most children were the most adversely affected.

Education was the tool for poor children to break out of poverty, and there should be educational reforms. At the age of two, poor children were already behind other children due to lack of nutrition and care.

Such educational reforms should address the children's needs within the educational system. Thousands of children were lost due to lack of vocational subjects, he said. Around 2,000 children every year were lost within the educational system.

Concluding, Mr Bartolo said that social services needed to be better because people living in poverty would, normally, have housing problems. Therefore, health and educational sectors needed to work together because poverty was a complex problem. Such debate should not have been held for the sake of having had it; the poor should be given new hope.