Cabinet will meet today to discuss proposals “to end poverty”, including possibly raising the minimum wage.
Caritas director Leonid McKay yesterday said he would be attending today’s routine Cabinet meeting to discuss, among other things, a rethink of the minimum wage benchmark.
Speaking during the publication of a detailed report on poverty, Mr McKay said he had a series of meetings with stakeholders scheduled and was hoping to affect policy change.
The Caritas team will be meeting separately with Social Policy Minister Michael Farrugia and then with the Opposition to discuss its poverty fighting proposals.
The report, entitled A Minimum Essential Budget for a Decent Living, has called for the minimum wage to be increased gradually over three years.
Other recommendations put forward in the report include giving low income families subsidies to help keep up with property rent prices.
The report is a follow up on a previous study conducted four years ago and aims to establish “the absolute minimum” different family structures can be expected to live on.
Meanwhile, speaking during the report presentation, President Marie-Louise Coleiro Preca called on the government to allocate funds for a “bail out” of those living in poverty. “There are both social and economic incentives to eradicating poverty. And just as we have had other bail outs, we should have one to end this problem,” an impassioned Ms Coleiro Preca said.
Repeatedly excusing herself for being overwhelmed with emotion by the “delicate subject”, Ms Coleiro Preca said the government should take the report’s findings on board when setting policy.
“If we really do want to have social justice then we need to help these people. Poverty is a threat to our fundamental right to a decent living. If I had ever set out to do anything it was to end poverty in Malta in all its forms,” she said, prompting a round of applause from the stakeholders gathered to discuss the report.
Returning to the proposed bail out, Ms Coleiro Preca said this would not cost “big millions”. Besides the social benefits to such a move, the President insisted that dragging thousands of people out of poverty and into a more comfortable life would have a positive impact on the economy.
She said one in three children in Malta was living at risk of poverty, a situation which could not be tolerated any longer.
Her calls for a fiscal solution were backed by Mr McKay, who said misconceptions surrounding the subject needed to be dealt with. “The idea, for instance, that many people have that poor people are a burden, parasites feeding off the Maltese coffers just isn’t true,” he said, adding that abuses committed by other social strata were far more burdensome.
Reacting to the Opposition’s claims that the report proved that poverty had increased, Mr McKay said this had not been established.
The data collected in the study, he said, had not given an assessment of whether more people were poor, but instead showed that the cost of meeting the expenses of a basic living had increased.
This, he added, was to some extent a “normal occurrence” as prices normally increased due to inflation. It was important to compare the rising cost of living to the support and access to self-improvement such families were given.