More than 30 people were caught carrying fake blue badge disability permits this year, inclusion minister Julia Farrugia Portelli told Parliament on Monday morning.

Expressing her frustration, Farrugia Portelli said that despite toughened measures to combat the fraud, including the addition of penalty points to culprits’ driving licences, the situation persists from one year to the next.

The blue badge allows holders to park in restricted parking bays. It is issued by Aġenzija Sapport to people with a disability.

But, Farrugia Portelli said, 34 people were caught with falsified badges this year, with some perpetrators resorting to increasingly inventive ways to cheat their ways out of their parking woes.

One culprit, she said, created a false badge using a hologram taken from a wine bottle in place of the badge’s security hologram.

Others, she said, came across a misplaced blue badge in the street and, rather than returning it to the owner or the police, kept it for themselves.

In total, six of these cases are now facing court action, with a further 11 cases to be re-examined to determine whether their claim for a badge is genuine.

New respite centres, care programmes, but poverty on the rise

Farrugia Portelli was speaking during her ministry’s customary run-through of budget measures presented last month.

She listed various new initiatives and projects set to open over the next year, foremost amongst them a €1.3m specialised programme for people with intellectual disabilities. The programme will be led by Richmond Foundation, with the involvement of Aġenzija Sapport, she said.

The government will also open new respite centres for people with disability in the coming months, Farrugia Portelli said, including a new centre in Kirkop and a second centre in Dingli.

The government will also launch a €5m investment with an NGO in the disability sector to help children and adolescents nurture their skills, Farrugia Portelli said, stopping short of providing more details on the project.

“The government has already implemented 84% of its electoral manifesto in this sector,” she said.

The session was also addressed by government MPs Romilda Zarb, Chris Agius, and Katya De Giovanni, as well as opposition MPs Graziella Galea and Charles Azzopardi.

The latter argued that despite the benefits and allowances dished out in the budget, the number of people living in poverty is creeping upwards.

Over one in three of Malta’s elderly is now living at risk of poverty or social exclusion, Azzopardi said, citing NSO data.

“This is twice as many as in 2013,” he insisted.

Others are struggling to meet their daily needs he said, with thousands considered to be living in a state of deprivation.