A year ago, Caritas Malta launched a fully-fledged report on what the minimum earnings ought to be for different family categories, consonant with what it considered to be a decent living standard for all Maltese.

Nobody, but nobody, contested its findings or its methodology. Except for a recommendation regarding uplifting the statutory minimum wage shorn of economic negative implications, all the other nine recommendations were accepted by everyone in politics and in society.

And, yet, hardly anything has been done that could be attributed to the Caritas report. Very sad, indeed. And this despite a general election.

For a government which believes in the concept of a ‘living wage’ to guide us towards the fulfillment, albeit slowly, of a widening ‘middle class’ band, the Caritas report should be revamped. If nothing else, it has served to prove that a computation of a living wage is not a chimera.