Government charge that it is violating pensioners' rights, charges brought against the Ministry of Finance are warned

Kosovo Institute for Justice (IKD) and the League of Municipal Organisations of Pensioners and Labour Invalids have accused the Kosovo government of violating the law and rights of hundreds of thousands of pensioners, not increasing pensions on the basis of calculating their cost of living and adapting to inflation.

In addition to eight thousand individual indictments that pensioners have filed against the state as a cause of this issue, the IKD has warned that it will take legal steps to sue the Ministry of Finance and the government at the Constitutional Court in Pristina for failing to implement and act on the law.

IKD researcher Naim Jakaj has said that both past governments and the current government have not respected the two laws regulating the pension issue.

He has said that the state without law enforcement is violating the rights of over 149,000 pensioners who receive basic age pension as well as the rights of 49 thousand other pensioners who receive the contributing pension.

There are two laws in Kosovo that regulate the pension issue, pension schemes laws, and the law on establishing methodology to raise basic pension, two laws with certain provisions regulate the issue of how pensions should be raised or what pensions should be doing well. As Kosovo's Justice Institute, I have found that past governments, but even this current one, do not respect these two laws according to specifications or according to requirements they have in the provisions of these two laws. Under the government's retirement methodology assignment law, the Ministry of Finance in this case is tasked with assigning each calendar year to next year the next pension in terms of inflation in relation to the cost of living food basket and in proportion to inflation, so as it was in the preceding year. Such a government is thus failing to do so subsequently is violating the rights of over 149,000 pensioners who receive the basic age pension that is already 100 euros. On the other hand, approximately 49 thousand other pensioners who receive the contributing pension are violated, he said.

Jakaj has said both the Institute and the Ministry of Finance have asked both the government and the Ministry of Finance to implement the law in relation to pensioners' demands, adding that in the opposite case, if no steps are taken in the month's term, they will file charges at the Constitutional Court of Government and Finance Ministry.

So failure to comply with these laws affects or violates the rights of over 200 thousand people in Kosovo who may be on the poverty line so they may be on the poverty line because today in 100 euros a pensioner cannot be lived. Both IKD and the Ministry of Finance have asked both government and finance to develop and implement the law in relation to pensioners' demands, in the case of non-involved, if within a reasonable term the government and the Ministry of Finance do not start implementing the legal steps so that both the Ministry of Finance and the government can sue at the Constitutional Court in Pristina for failing to implement and act under the law because of the violation of 149 thousand pensioners who receive basics of 100 euros and on the other side of the 49 thousand pensioners who receive the pension contributions to which are included. A reasonable deadline would be considered for a month until the government takes steps and adjusts to the report with other years”, he has said.

The chairman of the League of Municipal Organisations of Pensioners and Labour Invalids, Nijazi Gashi, has said the current law does not meet the conditions, is a bad law and is in opposition to many other laws operating in Kosovo, so he has said he has demanded that a new law on pension schemes be made.

He has added that in terms of their demands, they have found in deaf ears and that the government has not responded to those requests in any case.

We have declared this government's failure to act on continents since the first year that they haven't done the cost index assessments vital to the population of Kosovo we've reacted. At that time, we have requested that a change of the law on current pension schemes be implemented, which is, at the same time, we have submitted demand that a new law on pension schemes be made because this one does not meet the conditions is a bad law that is contrary to many other laws operating in Kosovo. We have encountered deaf ears, and the government has not answered us at all, and all the demands we have made have not been answered, and we have even called on them, and they have promised to receive us, and they will talk, and they have never accepted us. We haven't been admitted to the drafting commissions, either meeting the law on pension schemes, never informed us and never accepted. We've been analyzed and executed”, he said.

Gashi has said the retirees had signed a contract with three lawyers who would have appealed to pensioners without a cost, but who, according to him, had, in this case, reactions from the government, which he says have pushed them to break up this contract.

He has said that by this act the government has made flagrant interventions directly into the basic rights of pensioners.

We had a leadership meeting a month ago and we made a decision to control this phenomenon by seeing that those who have filed individual indictments each indictment cost between 50 and 150 euros made. After the meeting came the decision, three lawyers who offered us free service without money, without any expense, and it took us more acceptable than to go individually and pay these up to 150 euros. We have a contract with them, but at the same time the government has come up with two statements that this is a fraud, this is a bad use, people have been emptied with this level. And we've received a request two weeks ago from lawyers to interrupt that procedure, which is, normally, a flagrant and direct intervention of government into the basic rights of pensioners. On the one hand, they didn't raise their pensions, on the other hand you get the right to complain, and where to hang these poor people's hopes, I call them, because a man who depends on 100 euros a month for me is miserable. By the time we received email from the senior attorneys the number was about eight thousand lawsuits, he said. / EO