The poor are born into poverty without any hope

Environmentally, our world is an endangered habitat. Or so we, the unenlightened and ignorant, are led to believe by scientists feverishly seeking solutions.

What we are sure of is self-evident, but stubbornly and ridiculously considered infra dig, not be discussed or debated.

Too sensitive. Too personal. But it remains the most serious threat to normal, healthy living, causing untold suffering in the here and now.

They live in informal settlements, under railways bridges, empty shop fronts, in open veld, sleep on flattened cardboard boxes for beds, hessian bags for blankets.

And starving. They’re part of the poor born into poverty without any hope of extricating themselves; a worldwide phenomenon getting worse without lasting solutions in sight.

Only unsustainable patchwork schemes are half-heartedly tried by governments and religious institutions.

The forbidden subject? I type gingerly, expecting lightning to strike the keyboard.

But nevertheless I’m going to agonise through it, even if you bombard me with streams of vitriolic.

Birth control. Clearly and logically, the more babies in a poverty stricken household mean more starvation and wretchedness.

The problem clings like Velcro. There’s no quick fix but I believe the government and church groups could help minimise the horrendous situation.

The two sectors are, ironically, currently helping to perpetuate poverty. Government dishes out grants, the amounts based on the number of children per family.

Wrong. It’s a skewed incentive for adding more children. And no grant, however big relative to numbers, is going to help a family better itself.

In fact, it’s keeping them imprisoned in squalor and misery. Unbelievably, one group preaches and orders uncontrolled births. Something about being “fruitful and multiplying”.

This was originally not directed to the hungry and down and out.

The institutions should themselves be fruitful by providing multiple educational campaigns, emphasising the need for smaller families, allowing grants to go further – even enough to save.

This is sure to assist in breaking the logjam from which they are ordinarily entrapped.