Caritas has again called on the government to revise the minimum wage, saying it is “practically impossible” for those who live on it to enjoy a decent standard of living.

The comment is made in a Caritas document on the implementation of this year’s national budget.

The Church’s NGO working in the social field has been campaigning for a substantial upward revision of the national minimum wage for years. However, successive governments, including the current one, have always resisted the idea and employers are vehemently opposed to it.

Last year, a Caritas study concluded that the minimum wage should be increased by €22 a week in order to reflect today’s necessities. However, this proposal was shot down.

Welcoming various positive measures in the last budget, including free childcare for working parents and the retention of some of the benefits for the unemployed who start working, Caritas underlined the need to tackle the minimum wage issue.

“The national minimum wage has not remained consonant with the changes in the basic expenses of Maltese families. For instance, certain things like the internet and electronic devices such as computers, freezers, and so on did not exist, or were not as prevalent in households in 1974 as they are today, and this adds to families’ expenses,” the document states.

The minimum wage currently stands at €162.19 a week, or €8,433.88 per year.

“The State is obliged to ensure that every family has a decent income,” Caritas said. It called for the system of social services and welfare benefits to carry on being strengthened and updated so as to reflect the actual price index.

It was inevitable that within a society there were a number of people who could not work, the Church’s NGO said, suggesting that such people and their families “deserved to have an appropriate level of income that would at least enable them to afford to buy the goods and services necessary for daily living”.