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30 03 2007 Eight years after the conflict in Kosovo, pensioners continue to receive only small amounts of social welfare assistance of 40 euro, irrespective of whether they’ve previously worked and contributed to pension funds.
BIRN’s televised debate focused on finding ways in which pensioners could have a better standard of living.
Among
the subjects discussed was what happened to the pre-1999 pension funds?
And does Kosovo have a strategy for its pensioners?
To discuss these and other issues were the following panelists:
Fatmir Fehmiu, Chief of the Independent Union of Pensioners and Work Invalids
Sejdi Osmani, member of the experts group for economy during the Vienna negotiations
Fatmire Mulhaxha – Kollçaku, head of the parliamentary commission for health, labour and social welfare
Agron Bacaj, spokesperson of the Ministry of Labour and Social Welfare
Riza Shala, deputy of the Syndicate of Pensioners
Vërshim Hatipi, from the Kosovo Pensions Trust
Bacaj
said that the pension system in Kosovo offers pensions for all its
citizens from the age of 65, whether they have contributed to a pension
fund or not.
Bacaj added that macro-economic experts have concluded that a pensioner can live on 40 euro per month.
Kollcaku disagreed with him saying that the pensioners can’t even afford their medicine with that small amount of money.
“The problem is that there has never been a political will to solve the pension problem in Kosovo,” she said.
Hatipi
said that according to the law, the Fund of the Kosovo Pensions Trust
is not obliged to pay pensions to citizens who have contributed to the
pension trust of former Yugoslavia. “We are obligated to pay only those
people who have contributed to this fund,” he said.
Fehmiu
said that the Independent Union of Pensioners and Work Invalids has
written several proposals and requests to international and national
decision-makers in Kosovo.
“We have also written to Kosovo’s
institutions, in order to solve the pensions problem,” he said, “but no
one ever took the requests into consideration and no one ever answered
us.”
Osmani explained that during the negotiation process in
Vienna, they have also discussed pensions. “We demanded the money back
from Serbia,” said Osmani.
Fehmiu explained that the union he represents has tried to organise talks to discuss the issue.
“We
have organised a conference at national level and wanted the government
to be there. We invited the prime minister, four ministers and the
heads of the parliamentary groups - but none but a representative of
the Ministry of Labour and Social Welfare came.”
Kollçaku accused the media of failing to publicise the meetings and showing no interest in the pensions issues.
At the beginning of 2010 BIRN network published Digging Deeper - A Guide for Investigative Journalists in the Balkans, written in cooperation with Sheila Coronel, Director of the Stabile Center for Investigative Journalism and professor of professional practice at Columbia University, New York.
