Updated 6pm

Seventy-two former workers of Public Broadcasting Services or their heirs are receiving a total of €5.5 million in terms of a service pension which Telemalta, which employed them at the time, bound itself to constitute in 1976.

Telemalta, which then included a broadcasting arm, later became PBS. It had  committed to a service pension scheme in a collective agreement with the GWU in 1976. The scheme was meant to be similar to a scheme which the government had for its own workers at the time. 

The civil court years later upheld a case by the workers who complained they had not been paid what they were due.   

Social Welfare Minister Michael Falzon said at a press conference on Thursday that the payments to the workers or their heirs were being made by the government in line with a commitment in the Labour electoral programme.  Some payments have already been made. 

PN reacts

Reacting to the news, the PN said in a statement Falzon had tried to give the impression that the government was paying the pensioners what they were due out of its own free will. 

The PL government had appealed the sentence initially granting the ex-PBS workers what they were due, the party added.

"The reality is that throughout the past 11 years, a PL government tried to save money and avoid making these payments by delaying the case in court," spokespeople for the party Claudette Buttigieg and Ivan Bartolo added.