Lest we forget

Professor Joseph Azzopardi, writing in The Times of 2 June, quite rightly lamented the fact that during the 50th anniversary dinner of the Medical Association of Malta in 2014, no mention was made of the various disputes the doctors and the government had been involved in and, in particular, the 10year saga endured during the “cultural revolution” of the 1970s and 80s.

I write to lament another omission of the association. Hospital consultants, who have divided their working lives between the British and Maltese health services discover, when reaching retirement age, that the noble Maltese republic doesn’t pay them the social security pension due to them according to their respective Malta NI mandatory contributions deducted from their salaries. Maltese legislation permits our social security department to deduct most (if not practically all) their Maltese pension in lieu of their British NHS pension. Malta therefore argues “we’re deducting your pension because you’ve got one from the British NHS, and we don’t believe you should have two pensions from two jobs”.

Curiously enough, the Maltese medical association has never contested this pension fraud, as if the pension is not a contractual right for Maltese health service workers. Another curiosity is the fact that this letter, first sent to The Times on 5 June, has not been published – perhaps its contents conflict with some of the essence of the conference on the pensions reform recently partly organised, and expensively reported on, by The Times.

Prof. Albert Cilia-Vincenti President National Association of Service Pensioners