Not all those out of work and dependent on social benefits were lazy, the Jesuit Centre for Faith and Justice said.

Welcoming the government’s objective in the pre-Budget document to create opportunities while discouraging dependencies, the centre warned against generalisations that the unemployed relied on benefits out of choice.

Over the past few years, it had become commonplace to hear politicians speak out against social benefit abuse, it said, acknowledging that the government was being defrauded of €3.5 million every year.

Agreeing that social benefit fraud was unfair on taxpayers and should be condemned, the centre said the sum of €3.5 million represented just two per cent of the total yearly cost of non-contributory benefits in Malta. This amounted to €165 million.

“The political rhetoric may be conveying the idea social benefit abuse is rampant when estimates provided by the government itself show the immense majority of those who receive some sort of benefit are not fraudsters but are receiving what is rightly theirs.”

Pre-Budget document is silent on poverty and social exclusion faced by migrants

Reducing dependency was a laudable objective but it said there would always be some who were genuinely unable to enter the labour market because of sickness, disability and mental health problems while others were fully occupied taking care of family members.

The pre-Budget document failed to mention the situation of the working poor, those who, despite being employed, had a disposable income that put them at risk of poverty, the centre said. It was also silent on the issue of poverty and social exclusion faced by migrants, asylum seekers and refugees who also stood a higher risk of labour market exploitation.

“It is useless trying to raise the employment rate to reduce poverty if, at the same time, job opportunities provided are neither adequate nor stable, failing to provide an income that gives workers and their families a decent standard of living. The Centre for Faith and Justice encourages the government to pursue its strategy to ‘make work pay’ and to persevere in its fight against all forms of precarious work.”