From today, Wednesday 21 December, approximately 25,000 private sector workers started to receive a new benefit of €150 by post at home. Minister for Finance and Labor Clyde Caruana announced this during a news conference on the Budget measure that benefits workers and the self-employed in the private sector who work in shifts, on weekends or after six in the evening.
This measure will leave around another €4 million in the pockets of Maltese and Gozitan families. Minister Caruana said that this measure was put forward by the employers’ representatives when the National Labor Market Policy was drawn up in 2021. This is a financial incentive that helps to further incentivize workers who work in these sectors, while encouraging others to look at these sectors.
“This is another measure from a series of measures that reward the courage of Maltese and Gozitan workers. During this year alone, as Government we have given over €50 million in measures to workers,” repeated Minister Caruana. Among others, he mentioned the tax reduction on overtime and part-time – two measures that left around €11 million in the workers’ pockets, the Tax Refund measure with an expenditure of around €26 million and the In-Work Benefit measure with an expenditure of €12.5 million.
The minister explained that this new benefit will start to be given every year and both workers who work on a full-time basis and those workers whose part-time job is their primary job will benefit from it.
The eligible sectors in this scheme are Accommodation and Food Services; Administrative and Support Services; Manufacturing; Transport and Storage; and Wholesale and Retail. The beneficiaries must have been working with the same enterprise for at least six months and their basic salary did not exceed €20,000 during the year 2021. All those workers who think they are entitled to this benefit but have not received it, are encouraged to call the freephone 153 from Monday 26 December 2022. If those individuals are found to have any documents or details missing and eventually corrected, they will receive this grant towards the end of March 2023.
