Social Solidarity Ministry Marie-Louise Coleiro Preca, who is soon to become Malta's President, said she was determined to keep poverty on the agenda to ensure it remained visible.

"We must keep talking about poverty otherwise it will be forgotten as the subject is not sexy and trendy," she told a room filled with pensioners who attended a seminar, on poverty and elderly abuse, at the General Workers' Union in Valletta.

In Malta, she said, there were 46,000 pensioners of who 14,000 were at risk of poverty and social exclusion and 5,000 lived in actual poverty with women more at risk.

She insisted that poverty was not an issue of the poor since "we are all carrying the burden".

Before leaving she told people there: "Keep your mind at rest as my door will remain open to you... Well... In this case it's not my door but that of the people."

Speaking during the seminar, social worker Maria Camilleri spoke about cases of abuse on elderly she experienced in her job that included financial and physical abuse and neglect. In one example an elderly woman was locked in her home and left for hours in her own urine by her son who just wanted to take her pension.

Ms Camilleri told pensioners present to be careful and to ensure that they understood whatever they were asked to sign since there was abuse of power of attorney granted by elderly people.

Grace Cilia, from Caritas, shared a few reflections based on her experience.

Society will not have a memory without the elderly who helped maintain stable families, she said.

"We don't see elderly people as cute like children and their old age bothers us and we see them as a burden because they lived their lives and we now have to live ours. But their life made ours possible," she said.