The Malta Union of Teachers explained yesterday that after carrying out a stocktaking exercise it had registered a drop of 468 members over the past year.

While trade union membership in general increased to 85,722, the MUT saw its membership drop to 7,349 in June from the 7,817 members registered a year earlier, according to figures issued in the latest report by the registrar of trade unions.

In a statement, the teachers’ union said that over the past months it had embarked on a factual stocktake of its membership and eliminated a number of membership accounts that belonged to people who had left the teaching profession or moved to other countries and failed to notify the union. This, it said, was done to align itself completely with legal requirements.

“This exercise, coupled with a restructuring of life-membership accounts, has inevitably led to a temporary decline in membership over the first two quarters of the current year,” the MUT said.

The union said that during the past month alone it registered more than 100 new members.

There are 32 trade unions and 18 employers’ associations on the register.

The figures in the report confirm the General Workers’ Union as the largest union by far, with membership totalling 43,002 this year, an increase of 1,427.

The second largest union was the Union Ħaddiema Magħqudin with 26,592 members, an increase of 485 over last year.