The Ministry of Solidarity and Social Justice, the Family and the Rights of the Child has announced that more social measures will continue to reach families and pensioners during the month of March. These are part of a package of social measures of Budget 2022. In the first two months of the year 70% of these measures have already been implemented and therefore more measures will now be carried out during the month of March.
At a news conference, Minister Michael Falzon said that the process has now been completed in order to identify those seniors who will qualify for the contributory pension for the first time.
As a result, more than 900 people, mostly women, will be entitled to a pension equivalent to the lowest two-thirds pension rate, which is around € 50 a week.
This is possible thanks to the measure recognizing those who have paid stamps for at least 10 years, but were not entitled to receive the contributory pension because they have not paid stamps from January 1979 onwards.
Minister Michael Falzon said that from this month the administrative exercise will end, so that from April the payment of the new Inwork Benefit rates will be made and the entry limits will be widened in the three categories of working parents with children under the age of 23.
The current rates will all be increased by € 100 per child.
At the same time, a new rate of € 200 per child is coming into effect in families who will start to benefit from the widening of income limits.
Thus, those who were already receiving the benefit will see an improvement in the rates of € 100 per child.
The extension of the thresholds will take place later this year automatically as soon as we have the details of the income that families had in 2021.
Service pensioners aged 72 and over will also benefit from an improvement in their social security pension as the part they switched to take the sum is all being ignored.
With this measure, a promise was made in full in the electoral manifesto that all the sum would be ignored for the purpose of the social security pension.
At the same time, the amount of service pension that is ignored in the assessment of the social security pension has been increased by € 200, so that the sum exempted this year has risen to € 3,066.
In the meantime, around 3,200 seniors receiving Supplemental Assistance have automatically become eligible for free medical assistance, or the Pink Card, as it is better known.
This has been made possible by removing the need for these seniors to be subjected to a means test.
Other people receiving the same help also become eligible as soon as they turn 80.
Beneficiaries are among those who have been enjoying higher Supplementary Aid rates since this year.
The month of March will mark the end of the anomaly in the widow’s pension. Until now, widowed pensioners were not entitled to a full pension that their spouses had before their death, but only 5/6 of the rate of that pension.
This anomaly will end, because from this year a process has started to gradually make an adjustment that will finally make the rate the same as that of their spouses before their death.
About 12,000 people are benefiting from these adjustments.
“Expenditure on contributory and non-contributory benefits between 2012 and 2021 increased by more than € 300 million and for the first time exceeded one billion euros. The biggest jump was in contributory benefits, which rose 45% to € 905 million. Overall expenditure on contributory and non-contributory pensions increased by € 489 million (or 86%) to one billion and fifty-nine million euros. This means that pensions have almost doubled from 2013 to 2021. This is a clear indication of how much this government has always believed in the people, and that it has the vision and credibility to continue to do so. “The difference in people’s lives,” said Minister Michael Falzon.
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