Do you remember when the price of bread went up by 1c in 2004? I do. The national furore, the indignation, the decries that average families were going to die of hunger in the streets under a government accused of only caring about the rich.

I couldn’t help but wonder where those people were this week when a Labour minister unironically stated that if people feel that they are paying too much for basic food items they should shop in a different place. I hope all those proclaimers of doom and gloom survived that 1c increase in 2004 so that they too can now enjoy the privilege of paying through the nose for basic food staples.

Honest to God, I have no idea what they put in this country's water but it needs to be studied. Prices have been steadily increasing for months and the best many Maltese people can come up with is blaming the war in Ukraine or COVID-19.

Granted, both these things are ongoing situations, but they hardly explain the fact that the same bottle of water costs 20 different inflated prices from 20 different outlets. How are people with a minimum and now even the average wage supposed to be able to continue to weather the storm when wages have remained precisely the same for years on end?

Where are the discussions? The protests? Are these not the same bellies that were worried about being filled 20 years ago?

And, then, on top of all that, the party in power, which was built entirely on the premise of supporting the worker, makes it sound like it’s not the prices which are out of control but that you should be using your time better by cruising the lengths and breadths of the islands looking for bargains.

We can’t just sit here and keep being told that the government can’t meddle with the free market when people are beginning to go hungry- Anna Marie Galea

Here we are, a country of people edging towards the poverty line, where people are now buying properties in Gozo to use as their primary residence because it’s cheaper and, apparently, we are meant to be filling our cars with petrol and going from shop to shop as if we were doing a pub crawl.

I won’t be surprised if I start seeing women with copybooks and pencils studiously making neat notes about which can of tuna is cheaper. The only problem is that if the current trend of prices going up every two weeks continues, even that effort will have been for nothing.

We are no longer at a place where we are just talking about people not being able to afford to go out for an extra pizza every week; many are truly starting to feel desperate. We can’t just sit here and keep being told that the government can’t meddle with the free market when people are beginning to go hungry. Mechanisms must be implemented, and funds must be allocated to counteract this problem.

Perhaps all that money we spend on inaugurating roads three times over and funding vanity projects can even be used towards boosting our farmers, who will be one of our only sources of food should things get worse. We vote for people to govern us and ensure our people don’t starve; it would be nice if they at least tried every so often.