The latest survey by the National Statistics Office on poverty confirms Labour’s preoccupation that there is a growing number of vulnerable people who are falling into the poverty trap.

What is most alarming is that it has clearly emerged that having children is what pushes minimum wage earners into poverty. According to the Eurostat, a single person can survive on the minimum wage without falling into poverty. But as soon as this minimum wage earner has a partner and children, then the abyss of poverty is inevitable and insurmountable.

So, in quantifiable terms, it is calculated that a single person can survive on an annual income of Lm2,036, but a family definitely cannot. Yet this is the daily struggle that many families on a minimum wage face. I have always insisted on this point because I meet these families on a daily basis in my work among my constituents, both as a doctor and as a politician.

I have always made it my priority to help these families as best I can, because I have seen with my own eyes how they cannot afford to buy a course of antibiotics and when I enter their homes regularly, I can observe that they have to do without basic necessities that most of us take for granted.

Most of them bear their difficulties with dignity and fortitude. But it is a dignity that often serves to conceal the difficulties they face. These minimum wage earners are having to work side by side with the same conditions of work as immigrant workers who are lodged at a free immigration centre, with no electricity bills to pay and maybe food provided as well.

The minimum wage is totally inadequate for a Maltese family with children to live on. So, yes, I believe that as a society we are not doing enough to help our fellow Maltese who are imprisoned by their inability to find better paid jobs.

Many will argue that these problems have always existed, even under Labour governments. But I ask you all to stop and think how, in the past years, housing costs, electricity bills and other cost of living expenses have escalated. They have for us all, but pro-rata even more so for minimum wage earners.

The report on the poverty situation in Malta by clinical psychologist and family therapist Dr Abela and Rev Dr Tabone (Head of the Department of Social Policy at the University of Malta) describes how one in five children in Malta are living in poverty. We are failing the most vulnerable in our society and we are affecting future economic and social well-being by ignoring this problem.

In spite of all this, budget after budget the Nationalist government has persisted in reducing drastically the budget allocated for children’s allowances. For years I have protested against this, and have issued a number of press statements criticising the reduction of the children’s allowance budget. Up to now, my criticism has fallen on deaf ears.

Over the last 10 years, the Nationalist Government has reduced government expenditure on children's’ allowance by 33 per cent , from Lm21 million to Lm14 million. In sharp contrast, the Labour Government, under Dr Alfred Sant, increased spending on children’s allowances. Our society is increasingly one of sharp contrast between the haves and the have-nots. It is anything but smart for a hidden and forgotten group of children.

Unfortunately, one in five of Maltese children suffers in silence and the poverty in which they live prohibits them from participating fully in school activities. They cannot afford to go on school outings, and they cannot afford what today are basic necessities for their education, such as books and computers.

The Nationalist government has used the excuse of children’s allowance fraud and a declining birth rate as a reason for children’s allowances to be reduced. As a Labour spokesman on this issue, I can assure everyone that the Labour Party is in favour of the eradication of all social benefit fraud, but we are firmly convinced that not enough is being done to help the plight of these children.

Who is going to hear their silent cry?

Dr Karl Chircop is the Malta Labour Party’s spokesman on social protection