So far, discrimination within the ‘pension pub’ has been limited to a time aspect, with the younger having to work longer to reach pensionable age.

This year, however, will go down as the year that tilted the axis further back, heralding in a monetary discriminatory measure, with the older in society now about to be receiving less euros on their pension cheque.

This stroke of seemingly hard luck for those falling within a particular birthday bracket is the result of a pensions reform dating back to 2005 and the consequent changes made to social security payments effective 2011 onwards.

It is also the first time since Dom Mintoff’s reform in the 1970s that such a distinction is being made.

On May 1, I wrote the following on social media:

“The Ministry of Social Policy intends freezing the pensions of the 92,000 pre-1962 born pensioners to keep it at present rates. The post-1962 born pensioners, till now 2,700, will instead continue getting periodical and regular adjustments. This would mean a loss of around €350 a month for pre-1962 born pensioners. Is Robert Abela going to announce this discrimination in his May 1 speech today?”

The Minister for Social Policy,  Michael Falzon subsequently denied this was the case.

I replied, quoting the 2023 budget and referring him specifically to the excerpt stating “We will also introduce a new limit concerning pensioners who were born from 1962 onwards, which will be tied to the highest pension such persons can receive”.

Since then, a deafening silence from Falzon.

The budget implies that, from this year, pensioners born pre-1962 will receive €82 per week less than their younger counterparts (€261.84 versus €343.99), amounting to a difference of over €350 per month, depending on one’s birth date.

Tangibly, all those born pre-1962 will be left with less money in their pockets, less spending power and, arguably as things are going, more difficulty to make ends meet. Ageism, at its best.

The logic at play here suggests that those people who worked less years to reach pensionable age will start being penalised by receiving less euros in their bank account.

Why are older members of society being hived off as lesser beings?- Arnold Cassola

But will pre-1962 born pensioners be given a proportionate discount (circa 30 per cent) on their living expenses to compensate for the €350 less in their pension received per month? Of course, the rhetorical answer is no.

To make matters worse, the (2022) maximum pension is set at €261.84 per week. When calculated annually, this figures around €13,511.68, lower than the minimum €14,800 deemed necessary for a single childless person to live an adequate life.

This figure, emerging from a recent study, excludes housing costs, meaning that non-home owner pensioners could arguably be jetting head first over the poverty line and, in the absence of alternate arrangements, be easily facing homelessness. The current maximum pension is also well below the average salary of €20,000 (2019 records). Another consideration is why were pensioners themselves not represented in the relevant focus group when all this was being decided via the ‘Pensions Strategy Working Group’?

Weren’t pensioners the most relevant and directly impacted stakeholders? And why were pre-1962 born pensioners not given the opportunity to integrate their pension contributions on a voluntary basis at the time?

Why are the older members of society, the more vulnerable, being hived off as lesser beings whose wants and needs are being forcibly downsized?

This institutionalised ageism severely jars with Malta’s hallmark of championing civil rights and calls all sorts of things into question, including whether this merits constitutional reform to prevent the further unravelling of the welfare state as we know it.

In the meantime, since pensioners do not fall in the MP-Judiciary-Permanent Secretaries categories, those who get a two-thirds pension of their full salary, the pre-1962 born ones anxiously wait to see whether their birth age condemns them to a lesser treatment.

Arnold Cassola is a former secretary general of the European Green Party and an independent candidate at next year’s MEP elections.