ZAGREB, March 30, 2018 - The leader of the opposition Živi Zid party, Ivan Vilibor Sinčić, said on Friday that after Easter his party would submit bill to parliament on minimum guaranteed pensions, including a national old age allowance to help people who do not meet retirement conditions and have fewer than 15 years of service.
The minimum pension would be granted to people who have become eligible for a pension but whose pension allowance is very low and insufficient for a normal life, Sinčić said, adding that the party had made a calculation of the individual amounts of such pensions and their cost for the state budget.
Sinčić said the pension reform proposed by the government was "a continuation of plunder because we would have to live to be 93 to get back the money paid as pension contributions, and we know that the maximum life expectancy in Croatia is 76 for men and 81 for women."
"We won't ever get back a large portion of the money we have been paying (as pension contributions) and the pension reform is most likely being proposed so that one day all of us have lower pensions," said Sinčić.
Sinčić said that current pension allowances were miserable when compared to the cost of an average consumer basket and that the authorities were responsible that pensioners, who make up one-third of the population, lived in poverty.
"Their status is disastrous... we have also been working on changes to the Distraint Law based on Slovenia's model. The bill banning the sale of debts and other bills we have submitted will significantly improve the quality of life not only for pensioners but also for destitute households," said Sinčić.
MP Branimir Bunjac said that, under the party's pension model, people with a minimum 15 years of service would get a pension allowance of at least 1,500 kuna while those with 40 years of service would receive 3,150 kuna.
Bunjac said the implementation of the law would cost around four billion kuna, adding that the minimum guaranteed pension would be calculated against the minimum guaranteed wage, while the national old age allowance would amount to 1,020 kuna, or 60 kuna more than the maximum welfare allowance.
