The proof of the pudding is in its eating. The proof that old age pensioners are worse off than they were in 2013 – the year that Labour Party came to power – lies in the fact that, in 2013, those pensioners (65+) at risk of poverty and social exclusion were 14.9 per cent of the total. In 2022, the figure shot up to 30 per cent.

In his April 17 reply to my opinion of April 9, Michael Falzon, the minister for social policy, wrote that “last August, APAN, the PN’s Association of Pensioners and Senior Citizens, held a seminar where it claimed that the government had to eliminate the anomaly under which those born before 1962 have different pension entitlements to those born after that date”.

I wonder from where he got this information because APAN did not hold any seminar on that date or any other date.

Falzon also accuses me of not telling the truth when I wrote that the government was increasing the pensions of just 10,000 pensioners.

I was telling the whole truth that emerges from the budget speech for 2024.

On page 17, under the heading One Maximum Pensionable Income, the minister said that “as from next year, therefore, those pensioners who were born before 1962 and whose current salary, had they still been working, would exceed their Maximum Pensionable Income, will be receiving an additional increase in their pension which varies according to the salary”.

Importantly, he added: “Nearly 10,000 pensioners are expected to benefit from this measure.”

Falzon confirmed what I said when he wrote that “in the budget we had estimated 10,000 would immediately benefit. In reality, the figure will surpass 23,000....”

If the figure has gone up to 23,000, it is good news for those extra 13,000 but it is still bad news for the other 50,000 who are not going to get the increase.

At the end of September 2023, 72,868 persons were receiving some sort of retirement pension. In fact, that is why I insist that they are creating two classes of pensioners: those who are receiving the additional increase and those that did not receive any increase.

The fact that the estimated figure in the 2004 budget shot up from 10,000 to 23,000 shows that, when it comes to estimates and planning, Labour governments fail miserably.

Falzon referred also to economic growth, stating that “under the Nationalists, economic growth was so low that any sort of increase in real pensions was virtually impossible”.

Under Nationalist governments, between 1987 and 2013, retirement pensions went up by an average of 184 per cent per capita while the rate of inflation at the same period stood at 86 per cent. This shows that pensioners were better off. Especially after five-and-a-half years (between 1981 and 1987) when pensions were frozen out by the Labour government, as well as jobs for women and wages.

Under Nationalist Party governments, pensioners were never given a meagre increase in their pension, such as the €0.58 which they received in 2015. At that time, prime minister Joseph Muscat said the government would not tamper with the COLA mechanism. What an excuse!

The Labour government had 11 full years to come out with more reforms in our pension system- Joseph Zahra

Today, the government boasts that pensioners were given the highest increase ever. It should not have been otherwise since we had the highest increase ever in the cost of living. That high increase was COLA with a top-up of €2.19 per week.

I remember much better times, minister.

The pension issue revolves around what Falzon said some weeks ago when he urged people to invest in private pension plans, warning that the demographic shift to an ageing population could impact the public pension system.

He noted there is no guarantee of what will happen in the future.

The pension reform in 2007 was meant for pensioners born after 1962, whose pensions would have been vastly inadequate for a decent standard of living after 2040 if nothing had been done. Had that reform not been done, those born after 1962 would have been doomed.

But, as I explained on April 9, the Nationalist government did not forget pensioners born before 1962. The reform laid down an increase in existing pensions to be given through budget measures by the consecutive governments of the day. The Nationalist administrations never feared reform.

The Labour government had 11 full years to come out with more reforms in our pension system because nothing is written in stone and circumstances change, especially in such a demographic winter.

In fact, the Strategic Plan Review of 2020 acknowledged that “an inflation wage indexation mechanism does have a socially equitable impact for current pensions” and recommended changes in the indexation mechanism.

Josef Bugeja, secretary of the GWU, acknowledged this recommendation in a Times of Malta opinion piece on April 12, further stating that the Labour government introduced this measure in the 2024 budget. That is four years after it was recommended and a year away form the next Strategic Plan Review of 2025.

This is what the Nationalist Party has been recommending for years.

I sincerely hope that the minister for social policy will improve pensions in a way that will reduce the thousands that are being added every year to those living in risk of poverty and social exclusion.

That is what social policy is all about.

Procrastination in delivering on the recommendations of the Strategic Plan Review 2020 has left thousands of pensioners in the lurch.

Joseph Zahra is president of the Association of Pensioners and Senior Citizens PN (APAN).