Christmas is the "giving" season. Some leading companies may feel that giving some euros out of their huge profits to a charitable institution is enough to fulfil their social obligations. Solidarity takes different forms.
Climbing the ladder from poverty to wealth has never been an easy task. The road is getting longer and fewer people are making it to higher economic and social levels. The people's chances in life should be determined by their talent and hard work and not by their social background. Assisting people to climb a number of steps up the socio-economic ladder will continue to be at the very centre of the UĦM agenda. A social market economy should focus on the needs of people also.
Recently, I met a young man, at our headquarters, who spent a long time living in a family dependent on social benefits and having to suffer the social stigma of poverty and its effects. Joe, not his real name, pleaded with me to bring his account to the widest audience possible in order to inform others of the harshness of life at the bottom of the economic ladder.
Joe, 26 years old, told me that he works as an unskilled manual worker doing a low-paid job in a small manufacturing company with limited opportunities to survive in the present harsh economic turmoil. His educational background is limited and he can hardly read or write. I could read in his face that he felt that his future is very bleak.
With a strong voice he told me that it hurts him when someone plays at poverty for a while in order to tell other people what it is like to live in poverty. Ask the poor people themselves, he retorted. He insisted poor people are financially in distress and the opportunities to improve in life are limited due to the earned stigma. Nonetheless, poor people aren't stupid.
The media seems to focus on the more dramatic stories but not on the poor people. The extent of poverty in Malta has been well documented in various reports. Poverty levels had risen significantly for a variety of reasons including demographic, economic and political. Poverty has transformed in nature from one that was evident in our streets in the 1960s to a more complex situation nowadays.
During our conversation, Joe moved to another stream of thought and emphatically expressed his view: "I do not doubt that we have a caring society, which, on many occasions, expresses and sympathises but that is not what poor people want; it is instead the chance to express their views and an opportunity to improve their lives people in this strata of society are looking for. I would like my voice to be heard. I am sure poor people have a lot to say and it would be a sincere perspective. Poor people need hand holding in this process".
A series of cash welfare programmes led to structural incentives for recipients to remain unemployed rather than find work.
Social benefits should not be dished out liberally but handed out for a defined period of time while supporting people to re-integrate into the world of work.
The challenge for our society is clear: We should continue to work to reduce poverty in all forms while maintaining and building on sustainable economic growth with well-entrenched values of social justice and solidarity. How this can be best achieved to ensure that everyone has the opportunity to benefit from a social market economy is still to be well defined. We are all in duty bound this Christmas to allow Joe to be able to see some light at the end of the tunnel.
Mr Vella is general secretary of the Union Ħaddiema Magħqudin.
gvella@uhm.org.mt