President Marie-Louise Coleiro Preca this morning cautioned that people of a certain age and those who opted to remain in employment after retirement age could be vulnerable to exploitation and called on trade unions to give priority to this form of abuse.

She made this appeal during a half-day conference on the trade union's role on active aging. The event was organised by the National Trade Union Forum - an entity set up nearly a year ago by the Presidency with the aim of bringing unions closer together.  

In her opening address, the President called on unions to work for a culture change through which there would be greater recognition for their skills and experience at the place of work. 

She said that unions could help and promote Malta as a role model in this aspect by giving greater importance to the acting aging agenda. She noted that the most vulnerable were the 'working poor' as these were not in a positions to make ends meet with the retirement pension alone and so had to boost their monthly income in one form or another.

The seminar was also addressed by gerontologist Marvin Formosa who said that in eight years the world population of those aged 65 years and over would outnumber children under five years. This would warrant a completely different approach to employment, he said.

In his presentation, he noted that Malta placed in the penultimate place in an EU study carried out in 2012, on the number of people aged 55 and over who were still in employment.  Poor health and difficult working conditions were among the reasons cited for this low rate. 

Dr Formosa said that greater work rate participation of elderly people could be achieved through lifelong learning, healthy working conditions, greater sensitivity for their needs, positive discrimination, specialised employment services, and more fiscal measures.