(Podgorica, 7 March 2011) – MANS supports the decision of pensioner representatives to join the March mobilization in demanding concrete change from the government due to the extremely difficult material situation confronting retirees. While the Montenegrin government has been stuffing the pockets of domestic and foreign tycoons with millions of euros for years, it is the pensioners and disempowered workers who have paid the highest price for such catastrophic decisions.
Of the more than 110,000 pensioners in Montenegro, the majority cannot enjoy the benefits of all that they have worked to build over the years. It is clear that for most pensions it is still a question of basic survival, given that the average pension in Montenegro is €280, while more than half of pensioners receive less than this amount. The lowest pension is a mere €100 a month.
When one considers that the consumer spending basket for a four member family is €800 a month, that pensioners need to buy food and medicine, to pay electricity, water and phone bills, it is clear that the Government has not secured even the most basic conditions of existence for pensioners.
That is, instead of respectable pensions, the Government has only given crumbs to the oldest members of our society, including small one-time grants, some electricity subsidies and vacation pay. Should we mention that due to the “wrong” calculations of the basis for determining pensions, pensioners were deprived for years of what they were actually owned according to the law.
While the state was cheating its oldest citizens, it was also taking forcefully from their wallets in order to save various “business” ventures, including those of the country’s most infamous family, as well as that of Russian oligarchs like Oleg Deripaska and various domestic versions of him.
For instance, five years into the “privatized Aluminum Combine” the state has spent the equivalent on this enterprise as two years worth of pensions (over 110,000 pensioners or almost a fifth of the Montenegrin population).
On the other hand, Government ministers have, together with members of parliament carefully taken care of their own personal interests when they become pensioners. In this way, after a few years they handed out national pensions that range from €800 to as much as €1800 a month for themselves.
Even though the Constitutional Court later annulled this decision on such national pensions, they are still being received by 115 former functionaries (costing the state budget an additional €1-million a year). When one considers that for all remaining pensioners a yearly amount of €360-million is required, it becomes clear that each former functionary costs taxpayers ten times the amount of any other pensioner.
Prime Minister Igor Lukšić’s government needs to understand that such unprincipled policies and the crumbs being doled out for years to pensioners will no longer be tolerated. Their limits of tolerance have been breached since it is now a question of bare survival.
MANS calls on all Montenegrin pensioners to join the mass-mobilization this March, which is being organized alongside the Union of Free Trade Unions of Montenegro (UFTUM) and the Student Union of Montenegro (SUM). In this way they will be able to express and voice their discontent against their small pensions, high electricity bills and misguided government policies that serve to enrich tycoons and impoverish the rest of the citizenry.
