As it has been pointed out in this newspaper, the Government has maintained that the situation in Malta regarding occupational/service pensions cannot be compared to other cases considered by the European Court of Justice where the general principle of workers’ freedom of movement was elaborated.

We have never understood this argument. Some of our pensioners have been punished for not only having worked in another country but also for having changed employment within Malta itself. Post-colonial Maltese administrations have also been punishing those with private pensions (who declared them).

If that wasn’t enough injustice and discrimination, the Administration recently prepared legislation to permit new occupational/service (second pillar) pensions and new private (third pillar) pensions, when the problem of the current service and private pensions is still unresolved. They have also had the cheek to recently exempt holders of UN and EU occupational/service pensions from this problem.

The latest Nationalist Party electoral programme included the first documented costings to seriously attempt resolving this long-standing injustice. We trust the new Labour Government will build on that and push forward satisfactory reparations (within a reasonable timescale) to a sector of our population that never deserved such shoddy treatment in their latter years. We are, in fact, the only country in the civilised world that deducts one pension from another of those individuals who paid for more than one pension.