Driving through Fleur-de-Lys, one afternoon, I watched a large group of people gathered at a street corner, waiting for their handout of free food from one of Malta’s soup kitchens. Another of those kitchens, run by the Franciscan friars in Valletta, recently announced that, last year, 2023, it fed 27,000 people.

It also handed out tens of thousands of packed lunches. €603,660 collected through donations from 121 companies, 1,160 individuals and 20 schools helped buy the food to feed those thousands. Seventy-two volunteers helped prepare those meals and packed lunches. Eighty-six per cent of those fed were Maltese citizens.

In 2024, that’s where we are ‒ reviving a Victorian notion of destitution. Those desperate people hanging around, waiting desperately for their daily ration at a street corner is reminiscent of Dickens’s sliver Twist asking for more.

Those hunger queues are just the tip of the icebergs in Labour’s Malta. Based on the latest NSO figures published in June 2023, 16.7 per cent of the population are at risk of poverty. That is, 85,797 people in this country earn less than €10,893. And 20.1 per cent are at risk of poverty or social exclusion. That’s a staggering figure. One out of every five of us is in this desperate situation. Among the elderly it’s one in three.

Labour brags that it’s the party of the vulnerable, the poor and the underprivileged. Yet, the number of those at risk of poverty is significantly higher after 10 years of Labour than it was under GonziPN. Malta had the lowest at-risk-of-poverty-rate in 2006 ‒ 14.2 per cent.

Labour keeps bragging about their economic miracle. And, yet, we have thousands more at risk of poverty now than we had during Gonzi’s premiership.

Malta reached a record high at-risk-of-poverty rate in December 2019 when Joseph Muscat stepped down. That is Muscat’s legacy.

After two incomplete terms in office and loads of propaganda, he left the highest number and the highest rate ever of people at-risk-of-poverty. Well done, Muscat.

GDP has grown, wages have risen but what’s the point when earning more buys you less? In numerical terms, it looks like we’re all better off. In real terms, more of us are destitute or at risk of poverty than ever before. The price of pro­perty and the price of food are rising far more rapidly than our wages. So, we may be earning more but we can afford far less.

Those 90,000 of our fellow citizens living in destitution, poverty or at-risk-of-poverty might be invisible for many who live in privileged isolation. But for those of us who work in the public health sector we touch it every day. We witness the increasing number of malnourished individuals, mostly elderly, admitted to our hospitals.

Some may be emaciated but most malnourished citizens are obese. Deprived of quality food, they satisfy their hunger pangs with energy-dense foods packed with fat and carbohydrates but lacking in essential vitamins and nutrients.

Labour’s been in power for over a decade. Despite all its boasting about protecting the vulnerable, Malta has never had so many poor people

Some of our paediatric colleagues are witnessing the same phenomenon in children. Scabies, a sickness of poverty, is making a comeback.

Labour’s list of products whose prices have been capped will push the poorest to consume the worst kind of food ‒ pasta, corned beef and french fries. Fresh fruit and vegetables are not on the list.

If you consume only the products on Labour’s list, you’re guaranteed to get sick. You’ll get scurvy, an 18th-century disease that killed sailors on long sea journeys. You’ll get sore arms and legs, your gums and skin will bleed, your teeth will fall out.

The Joseph Rowntree Foundation has just published a report on destitution. It defines destitution as doing without two or more of six essentials ‒ housing, heat, light, food, appropriate clothing and toiletries. It suddenly dawned on me that here lay the explanation for the stench of body odour on Bus X1 that I catch to Ċirkewwa for my fortnightly Gozo clinics ‒ that is, when X1 actually runs or when it’s not so packed that you’re left stranded.

When I mentioned this to a colleague with a racist streak, his explanation was that “only foreigners use public transport” and they “stink because of their food”. He was wrong about both. The vast majority of my fellow commuters were clearly not Maltese but not all. He was also wrong about the reason for that stench.

People stink not because of what they eat. People stink because they cannot afford the electricity and water for a hot shower, they can’t afford shower gel and deodorant. When you can barely afford a decent meal, even the cheapest deodorant, whose price keeps rising, is too much of a luxury. Smelling of rancid sweat is hardly the worst indignity one can suffer.

A friend who teaches at a government school prepares meat pies every Friday to hand out to some of her pupils just to make sure they get at least one decent school meal a week. As many as 90,000 people in our country struggle to put food on the table. That’s one in six of us.

Being at risk of poverty means you also suffer food insecurity. That’s skipping meals because you can’t afford them, not eating enough to satisfy your hunger, or going a whole day without eating because of the cost.

The magnitude of the problem struck home recently when our submission to a local large charitable foundation for research funding was turned down. The reason ‒ “the foundation will be focusing the 2024 budget to assist people in poverty”.

Labour’s been in power for over a decade. Despite all its boasting about protecting the vulnerable, Malta has never had so many poor people. Labour has turned Malta into a poor country with many rich people. Even the IMF has pointed out that Malta’s economic performance is “impressive” but income inequality and poverty risk are on the rise.

Labour should stop squandering our money. It must stop diverting our money into fake jobs for its loyalists and into multi-million fraudulent deals. It should start putting our money where their mouth is. Poverty is a solvable problem but not with champagne socialists in power.

While the Franciscan fathers struggle to collect €600,000 to feed 27,000 people, Labour’s Film Commissioner, Johann Grech spent double that on just one Malta Film Awards night. He spent another million on the Mediterranean Film Festival. He’s spent €600,000 of our money on travel alone.

In which planet is that social justice?