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Karl Schembri
Pensioners’ representatives have expressed their incredulity at declarations made by two ministers distancing themselves from the government’s White Paper on pensions reform announced by Prime Minister Lawrence Gonzi in last November’s budget.
“It’s unbelievable,” the President of the National Association of Pensioners, Albert Tabone, told MaltaToday. “Doesn’t a White Paper usually mean a government plan, at least a proposal, to which we are supposed to react?”
Tabone was reacting to statements made by Education Minister Louis Galea and Social Solidarity Minister Dolores Cristina which, although reported in the press, did not cause much of a public stir.
Speaking at a General Workers’ Union seminar on pensions last Wednesday, the education minister made a statement which baffled pensioners at a time when they were drawing up their feedback report about the White Paper.
A press report quoted the minister as saying that the White Paper “did not reflect the government’s or the Nationalist Party’s position” and that “it was just the findings of a group that was commissioned to carry out the research.”
“I can’t believe this,” Tabone said. “That White Paper, which everyone believed was setting out the government’s plans on pensions reform, is now being described by ministers as just a paper of the study group that drew it up. Does that mean government doesn’t know what to do? Or is government distancing itself from the White Paper so that it won’t be ministers who decide but those who comment in one way or another?”
Tabone was also confused by statements made by the family and social solidarity minister earlier this month, who said that the proposal to raise the national insurance contribution from 10 to 15 per cent to make pensions sustainable “should be and must be avoided”.
Again reported in the media, Cristina’s speech on the White Paper on 13 January, somehow distanced yet another minister from the government’s plans.
She said the government has yet to “present its own views after it has evaluated the reactions and feedback” it is receiving in the ongoing consultation process.
“At this point I don’t even know who we are discussing with,” Tabone said. “We’ll be commenting on this so-called White Paper and we are going to address our reactions to the chairman of the working group, but who is going to receive and take note of our reactions? Is it going to be the government or the chairman? Can we please decide?”
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