So now we know. The oracle has spoken (‘The fight against poverty’, November 6).

Current pensioners in the middle and ‘highest’ levels must wait some more (years?) before receiving a little manna.

Unfortunately the formula used for the introduction of the Guaranteed National Minimum Pension (GNMP) for all as from 2016 is hardly encouraging.

As far as I am aware, the annual national median income in 2014 was around €15,000. This results in a GNMP, for a couple, of €9,000 per annum or €173 per week – a somewhat distant figure from the €140 per week which is being paid.

Pensioner associations never asked for the same maximum pensionable income for all categories of pensioners.

They asked, and do expect, current pensioners to attain the €21,000 level (applicablein 2014 to those born on orafter January 1, 1962) by 2020 at the latest.

I am afraid that Claudia Cuschieri, communications coordinator at the Ministry for the Family and Social Solidarity, is badly misinformed as to how Dom Mintoff and his government treated ‘service’ pensioners in 1979 and the years following.

They certainly were notpermitted to retain the same rights they enjoyed under the previous regime.

In the case of this category, the government misappropriated, and is still misappropriat-ing, a portion of the socialsecurity pension for which they had contributed.

The fact that some enjoy two pensions which together exceed two-thirds of today’s ridiculous MPI is no reason to shout for joy.

Unfortunately, there is no Sir Galahad or Joan of Arc on the Opposition benches to press for the righting of wrongs which were allowed to fester in over 23 years of PN administrations.

So, as a thinking person, I ask: are persons born before January 1, 1962 doomed to end their lives in relative, if not real, poverty?