On the frontline of reform

Dolores Cristina, newly-appointed Minister for the Family and Social Solidarity, speaks about addressing social welfare abuse with a firm hand and addressing wide-ranging social reforms

In the wake of one of the most striking series of spontaneous arrivals from the North African coasts of migrants escaping the tragedy of the African continent, we find a new minister bearing the responsibility of ensuring humane conditions and appropriate accommodation for the hundreds of asylum seekers in Malta who are eventually shifted out from the closed detention centres into the open centres. Her discourse is different from that of most politicians. Dolores Cristina, former teacher, advocate of women’s rights turned politician, is refreshingly devoid of hawkishness, paranoia, and appeasement when she talks about the current refugee crisis, and maybe that’s the difference between the educator and the legal professional specimen of the Maltese politico.
Cristina, for example, talks about a fearful backlash vis-à-vis arriving migrants. She talks about receiving letters, several of them anonymous, reflecting Maltese concerns at migration. Some of them may well be akin to the erudition of Sunday proselytisers who share their fears of being “swamped”, “overtaken”, maybe even married off unknowingly to a distant land in their sleep.
“It is an understandable concern,” Cristina concedes. “However, there is also a certain excess of these perceptions which are removed from the realities. The truth is that we don’t know who these people coming to Malta are. I met somebody who has a Ph.D, and others who are professionals.
“In their majority these are people who had a career, a home and a family. They left home because of reasons, mainly political or otherwise, to come to Europe. Right now there is a backlash, a phenomenal fear, which is something absolutely negative.
“I think we can accommodate them whilst we are hosting them. Those who want to move on, because the majority don’t want to stay in Malta, can be helped to fulfil their aspirations elsewhere. Those who wish to remain here as refugees have to be seen to be completely integrated and that no prejudice is fomented in their regard, which would be the worst thing to do.
“What we have to look for is a long-term solution. We cannot keep on taking a piecemeal approach especially when considering that a new boatload is liable to arrive. We have set up a Refugee Service Area under Appogg, which caters for the needs of the refugees in the open centre. This includes catering for their healthcare needs, children’s education, and their access to the labour market.”
Cristina says the management of the migration flow also depends on a more expeditious process to have migrants’ status in closed centres determined swiftly. “People who are not criminals and who find themselves detained for a number of months and sometimes even years, makes for a stressful situation,” she points out. “Of course, we cannot have everyone let out of these centres. We have to protect Maltese society. Much of the criticism directed towards the army and the police is unjustified.”
“The biggest problem is overcrowding and frustration,” she says, in fact a proper ingredient for internal turmoil and rioting, much as has been the order of the day in past instances, and now only recently culminating in the murder of a migrant by another, such is the tragedy. “We have to remember that many of these people grouped together hail from different cultures, tribes and nations, and this does not make for easy living.
“They don’t know where their families are, and they have passed through a trauma to escape their countries and come here by sea. I wonder how many dead people have been left in the Sahara desert and at the bottom of the Mediterranean Sea. The ones who don’t make it haunt me, personally.”
Cristina says the Maltese situation has already been pointed out in the EU. In Rotterdam, Cristina stated that the migrant influx this year has equalled half the island’s birth-rate: “We don’t have the resources other larger countries have and the problem we have is bigger and different from other countries.”
Cristina has also gone on record saying she believes divorce will one day be introduced in Malta, herself being opposed to divorce. Nationalists are of conservative stock, a resentful moniker for some, but Cristina - who says divorce is not “in favour of the common good” - sticks to the tradition of ignoring society for being the sum of all its parts. But that could well be another discussion.
The bottom-line is that as far as the report from the Commission launched by Alfred Sant on divorce is concerned, there is no update expected: the ministry takes it from the other angle, having its own National Commission for the Family whose brief is to advise on family policy. Strengthening the family without considering divorce as a solution is the underlying concept. So how do we address the ever increasing number of separations and marriage annulments in Malta?
“I don’t think the issue of divorce should be politicised. We are talking about peoples’ lives and it is an issue which politics should not go into. I don’t agree with divorce because I don’t think it is in favour of the common good. There are many who disagree with me, but Maltese society will show us the direction in this regard.”
One questions which issues politics should delve into or not. Divorce is certainly one which politicians should address. If the Catholic patina cannot be shattered, much of the aspirations of European integration, such as civil rights, will be lost.
“I think Maltese politicians should address Maltese political realities. We know what the scenario is in the EU. It doesn’t mean that each law should be introduced in Malta, such as abortion. The majority of EU countries have abortion, but in Malta there is political consensus against it. Why should we import other countries’ realities? Politicians have to address Maltese people’s needs.”
Cristina today also has to address the pension reform debate. Although her ministry is a lead ministry in the reform, of which a White Paper is expected to be published imminently and for which she divulges nothing of its contents before publication, it is the Prime Minister and the MCESD that are at the frontline of reform. Top of the agenda remains however “reform” - pensions, housing, and rent laws. In the midst of the burgeoning social policy portfolio is the constant effort to provide social services to so many vulnerable sectors of Maltese society. Cristina personally meets single mothers deserted by husbands, victims of domestic violence, and those with accommodation problems. She is knowledgeable of the vulnerable sectors that need attention and the Ministry, she says, is well-equipped to cater for these people, despite social work being in its infancy in Malta. “Even the elderly, who no longer form part of this ministry’s portfolio, still come to us for assistance. It looks like few of them know that they are no longer catered for by this ministry [Today the remit for the elderly is in the hands of the parliamentary secretariat of the Health Ministry].
“That’s no problem. Those who ask us for our help will be assisted. If we cannot help them, we’ll direct them accordingly.”
As for pension reform, the underlying concept is that future pensions will have to be adequate to ensure that pensioners will not lead to impoverishment. “The situation as it is today renders the serious possibility of people becoming poorer and we have to avoid it. Pensions also have to be sustainable, given our falling birth rate and an ageing population.
“This is the bottom line, and I challenge anybody who says that we will not have a pensions problem in the future if the problems of the system are not addressed. The World Bank report has already revealed the problem, and as in other European countries, we have to address pension reform and social welfare reform to strengthen our welfare services.”
The agenda is a benefit-fraud one, and that comes with serious intent to address abuse. “We want to see that who is benefiting from invalidity pensions and other benefits are the people who have a right to them. When we started looking at children’s allowance we had already identified abuses and we sought to address them.
“Our next target is invalidity pensions. The average retirement age in Malta is one of the lowest in the world at 53.7. The ratio of those claiming invalidity pensions to the Maltese population is indeed high and gives rise for concern. There is nothing to fear: whoever has a right to the benefits will be given their due even if I feel that in certain sectors, some people have the right to more.”
I question Cristina on the high incidence of the so-called ‘boarded out’ workers in Gozo, notoriously a haven for a kind of patronage where rumour is rife on the ease with which early retirement for health reasons occur.
“I say that firstly we have to ascertain whether this is just a perception. If it is a reality it has to be addressed with a very firm hand.” Point taken.
Cristina says she expects to “pull together” all matters pertaining to her plans for reform within three years.
She says the Ministry is also looking at rent law reform, particularly in the case of addressing pre-1995 anomalies where rents of Lm1 a year, harking back from pre-war rents, still stand to this day. Inheritance rights allow children to stay on in a pre-1995 rented house and enjoy below market price rents, susceptible to limited revisions only after a temporary emphytheusis expires.
“We have been looking towards the possible revision of the rent laws. We appointed Dr Peter Grech, who is in the Attorney General’s office and who was in the 1997 Commission which studied rent law reform, to give us a résumé of what that Commission’s findings were. There was no report from that Commission unfortunately, and so Dr Grech is looking into its workings, to give us recommendations and proposals for us to see the real situation as it is. It is not an issue that can be tackled easily because we have to be very careful to be just to the owners and also the people who are living in rented properties. We don’t want to create problems for lower-income earners in this case.
“But we should also look at solutions: should we be looking at the issue of inheritance? That is something that can be looked at in the coming years, definitely. We also have a consultant who is working on the scenario, telling us who the owners are, who the tenants are, what the rents being paid are and what all the numbers are. We have to come to the nitty-gritty of the scenario.”
I ask Cristina if a land-hoarding tax should be considering in the bid to free up more housing units on the market. “There are already so many empty houses in Malta. I want to look at incentives which will put more housing units on the market. My personal opinion is to go for an incentive rather than a penalty; I would go for a penalty if my incentive hasn’t reaped results.”
On that same line comes a revision of who is socially entitled to government housing. “We have to review our definition of social housing. I believe there are many people living in social accommodation who should not be living there. There is an attitude in this country that once we are living in a government property, it is ours for life and our children inherit it, irrespective of changing financial circumstances.
“That is unfair, because it means that for a large number of years, social housing has benefited a rather closed circle of people and we should be looking at the people who really cannot afford to buy or rent. There is a group that worries me: it includes single mothers, where there is an unemployment problem, and a health problem. Those are the ones we need to target.
“I don’t think that building anew is a solution. We should be looking at what we have and evaluate the situation of people who are living in social housing and those who should be living there.
“We are not saying that people should be sent out on the streets. There are people living in these places who after having moved in at a rent of Lm70 a year some thirty years ago, have built their own flats and rent them out to other people. In my book that is not social justice.”
There’s another thing which worries Cristina and that the state of the Maltese family: “As a basic premise, the Maltese family is still strong when compared with other countries, but the problems in our families are increasing and we have to address them.
“What worries me is the cynicism in our young couples. It worries me when I see that the death-do-us-part concept no longer carries weight. Even in the early years there is this feeling that a marriage might not last more than a few years.
“I’m not being romantic, although that is part of people’s lives. That people start off thinking they might not be together in a few years’ time is really worrying. Pushing for a good family relationship is positive for the common good.” Ah, the common good… that’s another subject for dissection, and one which the Nationalist government should define once and for all.