When some people without housing opted to sleep outside in tents rather than accept the heightened risk at the shelters, 28-year-old carpenter Khaleel Seivwright came up with a creative solution to help them.
What connects this diverse group of persons: Julius Caesar, Fyodor Dostoevsky, the singer Prince, Susan Boyle and US Chief Justice John Roberts? They have all experienced one of the most misunderstood, maligned and stigmatising medical conditions – epilepsy.
Persons with epilepsy have been unfairly singled out, prosecuted and discriminated by various cultures and societies across the millennia. Persons with epilepsy have been and still are unjustly perceived as being possessed by magic or supernatural power, despite it being so common. It affects around one per cent of the population worldwide, across all ages.
This means that around 4,000 persons in Malta have epilepsy. One cannot stress enough that a person is not ‘epileptic’ or ‘suffers from epilepsy’, since such terms reinforce the stigmatisation.
The risk of dependence on foreign workers
For liberal democracy itself is based on the notion of no taxation without representation. The contribution of these foreigners naturally entitles them to political and social rights as well as obligations
3 February 2021, 7:41am
Official statistics, made available by the Ministry for Social Justice and Solidarity, have shown that 76,866 foreign workers and self-employed persons paid a staggering €168 million in social security contributions in 2019.
This represented an increase of nearly €30 million over that paid in 2018 by 65,092 foreign contributors. A comparison with previous years shows an increase of a whopping €89 million since 2017: while the number of Maltese contributors only increased by 899 between 2018 and 2019, the number of foreign contributors shot up by 11,774 in the same timeframe.
Foreign workers financed one-fourth of Maltese pension pot
Before COVID-19 foreign workers in Malta paid out €168 million in social security contributions of the total €735 million paid
1 February 2021, 7:52am
by James Debono
Official statistics made available for MaltaToday by the Ministry for Social Justice and Solidarity has shown that 76,866 foreign workers and self-employed persons paid a staggering €168 million in social security contributions in 2019.
This represented an increase of nearly €30 million over that paid in 2018 by 65,092 foreign contributors.
Statistics for 2020 showing the full impact of the COVID-19 pandemic’s downturn and numerous lay-offs of foreign workers are not yet available.
But statistics for the year preceding the pandemic confirm the increasing importance of foreigners in guaranteeing the sustainability of Malta’s pension system.