Parliamentary Pensions row continues

GSD MP Marlene Hassan Nahon’s reply on the issue of parliamentary pensions is ‘flawed’, Unite the Union has said.

The Union said this was owing to its understanding that the Commission on Democratic and Political Reform consisting of Messieurs Canepa, Gomez, Vinet and Vasquez already made recommendations on the timetabling of new pensions for MPs.

Unite points to the report which states: “Any new pension scheme should come into effect for new Members of Parliament elected after the next general election, safeguarding the acquired rights of current members.”

“To this effect, and as she agrees with us that ‘politicians should not have a privileged status over and above that of other public sector workers’, we fail to understand the cause of her uproar, and allegedly as she admits, that of her colleagues’, in resisting the provisions of the Contributory Pension Scheme as, and we reiterate, thousands of her constituents and many more in the future will enjoy.”

Unite added that a new MP specific pension ought to be devised through a select committee would again be tantamount to discrimination and divergence to the currently established Contributory Pensions, which is something that Unite would robustly contest.

“To this effect we are satisfied wholeheartedly with the direction undertaken by Government in order to ensure that equality on these grounds prevails.”

“Having cleared the above, Unite would put it to Ms Hassan Nahon that the real fight, the real challenge, is to make pensions in the private sector obligatory in order to further reduce costs to the public purse and to ensure that working class individuals and couples have the added financial security that they deserve in their later years.”

“We would wholly welcome the GSD’s support in our proposed measures of making Contributory Pensions in the Private Sector obligatory instead of sitting on the fence, quietly, as they have done to the present,” Unite said.