The poor are getting poorer

Just as the Christmas lights are coming on and the tinsel-decked shopfronts entice customers, there is compelling evidence that the poor are getting poorer in surplus Malta.

One can play around with figures but the hard evidence is known and lived out ever day by those who are suffering, and from whom no amount of gloss can hide the reality.

This is especially the case for those who live in rental accommodation. The liberalisation of rent and the influx of foreigners to Malta who able to pay higher rents are pushing many people, especially families or single mothers with children, out onto the streets. We cannot remember any other time when people had to sleep in their cars and when people have had to move back in with their parents after running out of alternative accommodation. The government has acknowledged this situation but it is taking its own sweet time to do something concrete. It spent its entire first legislature without building a single block of

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flats to offer to those without a house. Now it says it will embark on a programme of social housing but that is still in the future, perhaps the far future for those suffering the cold nights in a car.

There could be other ways to do something without waiting to build a housing estate. Something that is more immediate and which tackles the most urgent cases, unless, that is, the government is seriously worried it will be swamped by crowds of applicants.

There are hundreds, nay thousands of empty and vacant properties that can be rendered habitable at a reasonable cost and which can be given to those pushed out of their homes. That may be a speedier solution. Meanwhile, the government must again carry out an exercise to find out if government flats are actually being used and used by those to whom they were given. Just as there seems to be a big mess with regard to government factories, some of which are used to store boats and so on, so too there seems to be a bigger mess with regard to government housing. Minister Farrugia had begun to do something about this in his term at Social Housing.

Apart from the housing situation, the government is called to help more the poorest of the poor. Many do not work or cannot work and it was a good move by the government to allocate more funds to this substratum as it committed itself to do in the last budget.

There are, there must be, other ways to help these people. Some time ago, the government took over the distribution of food packets from the hands of the parish priests who used to do this. Maybe not all the real poor benefit from this and the lists must be continually updated.

Beyond all this, the whole country must rally around. It must not relegate the alleviation of suffering to the government alone. The period of Christmas, if not the spirit of A Christmas Carol, must lead the country to come up with practical help to the unfortunates among us.