Real
people in real Malta: Persons with specific life stories, experiences, needs
and opportunities. Persons living unique everyday lives and who share
commonalities and differences with others. Some are not
experiencing the best of times.
For example, the sickly
man who is almost fifty years old and who lives with a sickly mother in her
mid-seventies. She had to sell everything to bury her husband and they are now
facing eviction whilst waiting for social housing together with many others in the waiting
list.
The
single mother who takes care of her children and her wheelchair-bound mother.
They live in sub-standard property which is unaffordable and which they will soon
have to move out from.
The
single working woman who lives in social housing built a few years ago. Only
that its walls are full of mould due to water that seeps in.
The elderly
couple who dread the arrival of utility bills. The husband’s only hobby is to
meet his elderly friends in his workshop. Will he have to relinquish this to
afford utility bills?
The man
who lives close to illegal development which has been facing enforcement
notices since 1997. In the meantime, cement is being manufactured in an
agricultural area. Dust and noise galore. In the same village, other
illegalities persist as the Authorities rely on bureaucratic excuses to do
nothing.
The
architect who refused to certify bad workmanship, got transferred and had to quit the public sector as work
conditions became unbearable.
The young
man who lives with his parents as he cannot afford to rent or purchase property,
despite being a middle-income earner reading for a Doctorate.
The
elderly women with three-slip discs who urgently requires a carer. And the
myriad of elderly persons who are lonely amid the urban townscape.
The activists
and scholars whose proposals were ignored or used as photo opportunities.
The Labour-leaning
worker at Wasteserv who is shocked at the mismanagement and poor practices at
Magħtab.
The separated
mother of three in her fifties who manages to earn 1,200 Euro a month but whose
rent bill reads 850 Euro a month.
The woman
with disability who is given a weekly allowance of just 20 Euro and 38 cents.
38 cents more than what she was given a year before.
The civil servant who cannot speak up due to fear of repercussions.
This is a
small sample of the people I recently encountered. Politics, sociology and
activism enabled me to encounter many people in the past twenty-five years.
Sometimes you can follow up and assist, at other times you feel powerless and
can only empathise.
Such
people deserve dignity. They deserve to be listened. The forgotten woman and
man deserve empathy and action, and not preaching from the high chair.
On-the-ground
politics actively encounters people to actively seek the myriad realities today.
For
without real knowledge of one’s society, it is difficult to devise politics
with a social dimension.
