Probation officers and senior probation officers will be benefiting from R1,258 and R1,537 in annual allowances subject to performance after a retroactive agreement to June 2007 was signed between the government and the Union Haddiema Maghqudin yesterday.

Speaking at the Home Affairs Ministry yesterday, Justice and Interior Minister Tonio Borg said the agreement added a section to the original agreement signed between the government and the UHM in June 1998.

In the short ceremony, Dr Borg said that both parties felt that the increasingly demanding nature of the probation services being performed by the officers, 10 female and three male, required the award of a probation service allowance.

The newly added section 7 of the agreement grants R1,257.86 to probation workers and R1,537.38 to senior probation officers subject to satisfactory performance and the successful completion of normal employment probation period. The allowances will be paid annually.

Dr Borg said the government had set up the probation services to offer an alternative to the courts when a definitive prison term is not deemed to be appropriate. He said that the idea of probation meaning that a person will not go to prison, though, is incorrect. “Often these people are asked to compile a pre-sentencing report and sometimes they recommend that an accused serves jail time,” said Dr Borg.

Answering questions put by The Malta Independent, Dr Borg said he felt that the government had kept up with the pace and appointed new probation officers to meet the demand created by the ‘market’. “We now have 13 officers and when I first started practising law, there was only the one,” he said. Dr Borg also said that probation officers today receive intense three-year training programmes at the Institute of Forensic Studies, rather than being pitched in at the deep end. He said that about 500 people were subject to scrutiny by the Probation Services and added that Appogg and Sedqa cooperate with the Probation Services.