Speaking to pensioners at the end of a seminar, Mr Zarb said the report made public last week by the Malta Labour Party was not truly confidential and had cost the Maltese public a fortune, adding that how much had been spent on it has never been declared.

He said the government was making the pension system worse than it is today. On the one hand it is describing the present system as “unsustainable”, and on the other hand, it has been responsible for the decrease in employment. This means, he said, that there are fewer people contributing to the pension fund from which pensions have to be paid.

Mr Zarb said it was impossible to understand how the government could risk scaring away investment such as in the case of ITS, an American company which wanted to operate from Malta. However, the company left, Mr Zarb claimed, because it had spent 12 months waiting for a reply from the government: 400 new jobs down the drain, Mr Zarb remarked.

He asked if the government wanted Malta to become like many other European cities: with people begging in the streets and people sleeping on the pavements

“The forthcoming elections (European Parliament and local council) are important and we must not forget the difficulties the country is facing,” he said.

Mr Zarb mentioned a few points contained in the report and some of its proposals. He said the report proposes to increase the retirement age from 61 years to 65 years and also proposes the increase of the minimum years of contribution required for a two-thirds pension. This will be increase by five years, from 30 to 35 years.

Mr Zarb said the report also proposes a gradual change in the period used for calculating the value of the pension. At present, this is calculated on the average of the best three years’ wage from the last 10 years of employment. It is being proposed that it be calculated on the last 10 years of employment.

It also proposes that the target pension for a full career is two-thirds of the net wage rather than two-thirds on the gross wage. It proposes to increase from 30 years to 35 years the number of years one has to contribute before receiving a pension, he said. Moreover, young people will not have a guarantee that they will receive their pension because the insurance companies may go bankrupt, as has been the case in other

countries.

This report, claimed Mr Zarb, was being kept secret until the 12 June European Parliament and local council elections are over. Meanwhile, referring to Investments Minister Austin Gatt as “the bulldozer”, Mr Zarb spoke about Dr Gatt’s speech in parliament on Tuesday in which, according to Mr Zarb, he said that if the targets are not achieved, the government will close down the drydocks. “Try, and then we’ll see,” the GWU secretary general challenged.