When I think of social security, of social benefits and of benefit fraud, the now derelict office of the Social Security Department on the main road of St Paul’s Bay comes vividly to mind. This office, which long ago relocated to more appropriate premises in Qawra, was a stone’s throw away from my childhood home. On a daily basis I would see people going in and out of it to get any one of the spectrum of benefits the State dished out at the time.

As a child I could never understand how the system worked because while being told that benefits were for the needy and less fortunate in society, on innumerable occasions I would see people park their expensive cars right in front of the office door and pop in to register for the benefits.

While being told that these benefits were mostly for the unemployed, many a time I had heard people cursing that they’d be late for work while queuing there on a busy day. When the automated fingerprint detectors started being used, people had the cheek to complain that the machine wouldn’t work only to be told that their hands were too dusty for a proper reading to be taken. No prize is for guessing how they had been spending their time.

And at the time nobody seemed to bother. Nobody dared tell anyone they would be struck off the register because they were defrauding the government. There seemed to be a grave lack of initiative on the part of the authorities to stop the rampant abuse. And while the few who indeed took advantage of the system were happy about the situation, a great many others were not.

Genuine people, tax-paying, hard-working people do not mind chipping in to alleviate the hardships of the needy; however, it is one thing knowing that one’s contributions are serving that purpose and quite another knowing that one’s contributions are being enjoyed by the undeserving at the expense of those who are.

This government is determined to give everyone their due. It is constantly coming up with initiatives that promote social justice and in this very spirit has been working hard to fight benefit dependency and benefit fraud.

Dependency on government subsistence has cumulative negative effects. People tend to organise their life in a way that would allow them to qualify for benefits while keeping away from anything that would remotely improve their financial situation given that to a certain extent this would mean having to work for something they are getting for free.

In order to incentivise people who subscribe to this way of life, last year government devised a system of tampering of benefits that allows them to retain a percentage of their benefits for the first three years of employment. This proved to be very successful with 1,006 beneficiaries till September this year. Incentives such as this help steer the country away from a relief tradition towards independence which, together with an increase of employment opportunities, helps focus benefits on the sector that is truly in need of them.

I would see people park their expensive cars and register for unemployment benefit

In order for the government to be able to help those truly in need, it has to make sure that the money it has available is not taken up by the undeserving. The Benefit Fraud and Investigation Department (BFID) is tasked with seeing to this injustice being eliminated.

This year the department carried out 1,240 inspections as a result of which 592 specific benefits were stopped, leaving the public coffers better off to the tune of €2.4m. And that amount will be increased on a yearly basis as more and more efforts are being made to right this wrong. €200,611 was also found to have been paid in undue unemployment benefits to 351 people over the past year. And the list goes on.

Government has also given people the chance to regularise their positions if they were receiving benefits they were not entitled to. Again, there, 236 people responsibly came forward adjusting their entitlements which were being paid in surplus to the cumulative amount of €623,700.

The idea behind combatting benefit fraud and dependency is social justice and just distribution of public funds. I find it utterly disturbing that an initiative which is meant to alleviate poverty, encourage and empower people to better their lives and promote social justice has been used by Simon Busuttil, in his Budget speech, in a negative way, implying some sort of clandestine tactic to have a statistical upsurge in employment numbers. If even this noble effort is not seen for what it is by the Opposition, I have lost all hope that the Nationalist Party will ever be redeemed.

I applaud the government’s efforts in this sector. Social security should serve as a springboard that helps towards upward mobility of people. The fostering of a politics of dependency, on the other hand, is a recipe for disaster, tried and tested over a good number of years under the previous government. This government believes in the potential that lies in the people and it will hopefully continue to do so with unwavering success.

Deborah Schembri is a Labour MP.