Poverty campaigner Sheelagh Cooper has called for a national conversation on wage guidelines to help the Island's poorest people out of their "despair".

Mrs. Cooper said Government's long-awaited Low Income Thresholds study was a step in the right direction and now was the time for the rest of the country to help "share the burden".

The study puts the poverty line at incomes of less than $27,000 per annum for a single person and $76,000 for a two-parent family with two children under 16. It says 3,050 homes — 11 percent of households — fall below the threshold.

Premier Ewart Brown, who unveiled the document last Friday, said it would help identify families in need and urged them to contact the Department of Financial Assistance.

He said schemes such as free public transport and subsidies for the elderly would help ease the financial burden.

Reacting over the weekend, Mrs. Cooper said: "It is very definitely a step in the right direction. The real question is: what if anything is the Premier going to do about it?

"Now that what we know constitutes a living wage is this not the time to begin a conversation about wage guidelines?"

As an example, Mrs. Cooper said cashiers made about the same in 1994 as they do now without adjusting for inflation.

She continued: "There are many examples like that in the bottom quarter of the wage scale. While subsidised day care and free bus service for children are helpful, neither of these initiatives feed children or house them. These are basic necessities that below subsistence wages do not support.

"The Premier seems to be suggesting that these folks should apply for financial assistance. In my view that is just continuing to perpetuate a culture of dependency which has already firmly entrenched in multi-generational patterns of helplessness.

"These folks want and need real jobs that command a living wage.

"There are those that will argue that if they are not allowed to pay below subsistence wages that they could not continue to do business.

"We have to share the burden If we want to have a safe and healthy community and we will have to be creative and find ways to lift this important sector of our community out of the despair that they face."