This is possible since the four retirement schemes offered by government under the deal reached with the General Workers’ Union (GWU) will close five days after the results of the selection process are announced.

More employees are expected to follow suit in the coming days, sources close to PBS told The Malta Independent on Sunday. Until now, the number of workers who had applied for early retirement was 49.

The sources added that despite the fact that the internal call for applications for managerial and non-managerial posts closed last Friday week, none of the employees have been called for an interview.

Moreover, an external call for applications for the non-managerial posts has not even been issued. Only the external call for applications for management positions were issued. They were advertised in yesterday week’s and last Sunday’s newspapers.

Although the external call for applications closes tomorrow, names of a couple of journalists who had applied for the post of Manager News and Registered Editor have already been doing th rounds in the corridors of PBS during this week.

The other managerial posts for which an external call for applications has been issued are those of Manager Programming, Manager Operations and Manager Corporate Services.

The total number of workers at PBS will be 64, down by 114 from the current workforce of 178.