I am glad that Mr Peter Carabott in his letter, Teaching Hours (TMID, 31 July) mentioned the police and soldiers who retire after 25 years of service in trying to justify the unique working hours and holidays enjoyed by teachers. Please be informed that most soldiers and policemen work more than 40 hours a week, with inferior overtime and work conditions and no union rights. Will school employees ever accept these conditions of work?

I think that the best way to address all these work anomalies across the whole border is to adopt the philosophy “the more hours you work, the earlier you retire”. This was proposed when the pension reform was on the top agenda of parliamentary members.

This proposal had concluded that it would be unfair to put all Maltese workers in the same retirement basket of 65 years, as not all have the same amount of leisure time to enjoy life. So people who officially work more than 40 hours a week would continue to retire early, the normal majority class of people should retire at 61 years or a bit later, but school employees should definitely retire last: at 65 years of age.

Please, don’t beat around the bush about taking piles of corrections at home. What do you expect, if you always finish very early from school? There are thousands of Maltese people who work 40 hours a week, and even these take clerical work home.

If school workers do not like this fair-for-all retirement proposal, then I suggest that they should opt to find a new job like the majority of the workers who work more than 40 hours a week do. You can’t have your cake and eat it too!

Instead, all other categories of employees and government workers should be given the same opportunities, with the option to retire when they please, if they have worked the minimum required amount of hours/years and paid the necessary amount of NI contributions.

Jonathan Debono

Msida