Hundreds of current and ex-police officers have been offered €8 million in compensation for about 15 years of unpaid overtime.

However, at a maximum of €500 per year for each officer, the figure is well below the €30 million they have been asking for in their long-standing dispute with the government.

A 1993 collective agreement established a 46-hour week, beyond which the officers could claim overtime.

However, the agreement did not come into force until 2009, when the Malta Police Association filed a judicial letter demanding the settlement of arrears.

In its 2013 general election manifesto, the Labour Party pledged to give “adequate” compensation to solve the dispute once and for all.

In a Facebook post, Home Affairs Minister Carmelo Abela last week announced that the first payments would be issued this year and staggered over a number of years.

Mr Abela noted that aggrieved officers had been left empty-handed by successive Nationalist governments, who refused to give compensation.The minister gave no further details, and no replies were received to questions from this paper by the time of writing.

However, police sources say that the government is planning a payment scheme under which officers will be asked to submit a formal claim.

By adequate compensation, we understood we would receive much more

Under the scheme, €500 is the maximum each officer will receive as compensation for all unpaid overtime for a full year. This equates to €40 monthly.

While welcoming the agreement, aggrieved officers said that it fell well short of their expectations.

“Though we were not promised the full amount owed to us, which would have been in the region of €50 million, by adequate compensation, we understood we would be receiving much more than an €8 million package,” one officer said.

The union’s initial demand was, in fact, €30 million.

Details of the compensation scheme are still sketchy, with the precise number of eligible officers yet to be determined.

Based on the size of the police force during the period in question – about 1,800 member – as well as on the ranks in which officers were eligible for overtime (from constable to sergeant major), the scheme would apply to approximately 1,300 eligible officers per year.

This includes a significant number who have either passed away or emigrated.

Apart from the police overtime issue, the government is pledging to address other pending compensation requests through a grievances fund announced in the 2017 Budget.

Under this plan, an overall sum of €56 million will be allocated over seven years to resolve long-standing grievances involving various categories of workers, including the old labour corps, former Electricity Board employees and port workers.

Although no formal compensation for police overtime was ever tabled by the PN government, at one time this possibility was under consideration.

However, the offer, in the region of €10 million, was overwhelmingly rejected by the officers, who had deemed it to be too low.

A few years later, they may well have to settle for a lower package as part of an “adequate” compensation agreement.