About 400 cleaners and other workers on contract will get an increase in their pay once a new contract kicks in for the company they work for.

Finance Minister Edward Scicluna said some employers still opted to violate labour laws and resort to precarious employment. Such method of employment was very common in the cleaning, security and care sectors, he said.

The government is having talks with unions to discuss how to monitor both the public and the private sectors where precarious employment had also been reported.

In an attempt to take this further, the government set up the Commercial Sanctions Tribunal, which blacklists companies that resort to precarious employment.

Hundreds of workers on contract benefitted from a measure to combat this form of employment. These workers were given the same basic pay as those who worked for the government.

In recent years, the government had introduced measures regulating the information workers received on their income and sub-contracting.