A University discussion on poverty and social exclusion was told by a social worker today that a man lives in a cave and goes to Caritas once a week to shower.

Social worker Anthony Girard said that while many people thought that poverty was something which people brought onto themselves, that was often not the case. He worked among people who were experiencing real poverty, such as a man who lived in a cave and went to Caritas once a week, just to have a shower.

There had also been the case of a woman who lived on a farm with no electricity and tap water.

Earlier in the discussion, the chairman of the Social Workers' Association said that Malta needed to ‘look poverty in the eye' and said the issue was not solely a financial one, but also a matter of missing services for those who needed them.

Anthea Agius said that one frequently heard of people who could not make ends meet, or about long hospital waiting lists, but one rarely heard of of children on the waiting lists of child protection services, waiting to be seen by social workers.

Social workers were on the frontline of the state's battle to fight poverty, but the line was too thin, there were too few social workers, she said.

Social exclusion, Ms Agius insisted, was a form of poverty. People needed to have equal access to opportunities and more social workers were needed to help those people who could not, on their own, take the opportunities that presented themselves.

There was also need for updated legal structures.

There had been a case in court, she said, where a child was beaten with a metal object, but the court found that was reasonable chastisement. Clearly, Malta needed legislation to ensure that such things were not acceptable any longer.

Labour MP Owen Bonnici said a country's progress should not be measured only by what the people bought, but rather the opportunities of success for the weakest link in society.