Yana Mintoff Bland. Photo: Chris Sant Fournier

Lack of social mobility is leading to an unacceptable situation where the poor cannot improve their lives, according to the Government’s consultant on poverty Yana Mintoff Bland.

“The bottom 10 per cent of our community is getting less than €5,700 a year. It’s impossible to live on that and they hardly have any chance to get out of that situation. Only one in seven are upwardly mobile. The lack of social mobility is not acceptable,” Dr Mintoff Bland told Times of Malta.

Sitting on a plastic chair in a Marsa square last week, she waited for the first of a series of public consultation meetings about poverty to start.

The meetings will be held throughout this month and will help her draw up a 10-year national strategic plan for poverty reduction and social exclusion that will be drafted by September.

“I’m hoping people will share their challenges… I want to base the plan on reality,” she said.

She feels she learnt a lot about respecting the poor from her father, former Prime Minister Dom Mintoff, who passed away last summer.

I grew up in an atmosphere where the poor were not just respected, but seen as the salt of the earth…

“I grew up in an atmosphere where the poor were not just respected, but seen as the salt of the earth. I appreciate people’s resilience. It’s just amazing. People who have had to struggle are usually more open-minded and compassionate. And I appreciate that,” she said.

Through her policy document she will aim to empower the poor but for this to be successful there must be a community effort.

“We need to make it our responsibility to make our society more cohesive so that everyone has a good chance,” she said.

During the past few weeks Dr Mintoff Bland met with several NGOs and spoke about the need to better tap into EU funds.

During these meetings she opened her eyes to the reality that poverty is not limited to cer-tain localities.

“One person from Balluta Bay spoke about poverty, which was interesting as it is not something you hear all the time from that area,” she says.

There are many challenges ahead of her that include the lack of employment or quality of jobs.

“I think there is a lot of prejudice towards the working class. Certain people are stigmatised and they’ve been unemployed for a long time. Some have given up,” she says.

Other challenges include supporting vulnerable groups such as the disabled, the elderly and children.

“The most alarming thing for me is how many children are at risk of poverty,” she said, quoting recent data issued by the National Statistics Office that show that almost one fifth of children were at risk in 2011.

She also thinks there is the need to better support people who care for the vulnerable and take action to address violence – which is “very prevalent”.

Dr Mintoff Bland will also look into the option of increasing benefits where necessary although it is still too early to speak about concrete proposals and certain decisions would be taken at ministerial level. She is also fighting against public perception that poor people bring it upon themselves because they are lazy.

“I don’t think anyone should be lazy. If we talk about laziness and fraud I think they’re in every echelon of society and it’s unacceptable. That’s one problem, but it’s separate from the massive poverty trap that we’ve got,” she said.