On our front page today, we publish the story of a mother of three. She lives off €300 per month in benefits and is given accommodation of the most basic kind in a rundown room where the paint is peeling. Bugs have free rein and crawl about on food and surfaces. The sink where she washes her baby is tiny and a hazard.

She is so poor that she cannot afford the items that would allow her to send her children to school. Because she cannot afford to send them to school, she cannot go out and work because she has to look after them. She is caught in a never ending cycle of poverty. The story is pitiful, most would agree. Now, for the final detail. She is an immigrant from Eritrea who crossed the desert with her two children. Then she crossed the sea to Malta and fell pregnant with her third child while at the Hal Far Open Centre. Does that make it any more acceptable? No. It does not. The woman is grateful for the accommodation, even though it is a decrepit hole. But what happens now? Where will she go? Where is the state, one might ask. While she is not a Maltese citizen, one of her children is. And this is the reality we are faced with. We have a woman with two young children of school age and a Maltese born baby. Why is this happening? The woman lives off handouts from charity at present. But we have to ask ourselves, what chance is she being given? Her children are ghettoised before they have even had time to develop as young adults. These are Malta's next generation. We are allowing people to live in squalor and filth and with no chance whatsoever of integrating into our society. The woman has no friends, zero support network, as she grapples with living on a pittance and the task of raising three young children.

Is this the Malta we boast about so often in terms of our willingness to give to charity and help others? This particular case is one that needs state intervention. For starters, he children should be in school. She should be given free day care facilities. Then, someone should help find her a job, point her in the right direction, put her on the ETC's most vulnerable list. Social services should also be involved and if a baby is living in unsanitary conditions through no fault of the mother, then they should intervene right now and find this family some accommodation. Charities should get involved and see what they can do to help this woman. And like her, there are probably tens of other mothers who are in the same situation.

This is not a governmental problem. This is a problem that belongs to us, as a society and as a people. We need to accept that this is a very real problem. We are creating a situation where tomorrow's generations will be subject to emarginalisation, exclusion and worse. The result of the same is what we have seen where disaffected youth of many backgrounds head to the Middle East to take up arms and wage terror wars. If we do the same, we are risking the same consequences further down the line.