A plea from the heart

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Mr. Speaker of the National Assembly, Members of the Parliament, within two days, your esteemed Assembly will meet in a special session to discuss the issue of the retirees’ grant or their participation in the profits of the Public Institute for Social Security (PIFSS), therefore I present to you the text of my article that includes my personal opinion on this subject.

Please consider it with an eye of reason and wisdom, and away from the desire to please some at the expense of others.

My wife and I are direct beneficiaries of any law issued in relation to the retirees grant but what we will obtain does not justify our support for the issuance of this law or our happiness with its approval because we feel that it is unfair, even if approved, and sets a dangerous precedent and represents a prejudice to the rights of hundreds of thousands of citizens participating in the PIFSS fund, which will be withdrawing at least 600 million dinars, or two billion dollars and give it to retirees, unjustly.

In addition, the financial position of PIFSS investments is not comfortable and the institution’s losses have recently increased with the recent collapse in the financial markets in the world which is the largest area for the investments of its funds.

Paying six hundred million dinars from the Institute’s funds to retirees may become a custom, and other payments will follow and this will increase the weakness of the financial and monetary situation of the institution’s investments. Therefore, it is fair that you refuse to harm the rights of the participants to satisfy the retirees.

We also wish the government to prepare for the session to approve the law and to request the attendance of PIFSS managers to express their point of view.

It is not fair to assign them to run the institution and invest its money and to hold them accountable for it in the future if they fall short and at the same time we allow ourselves to impose our will on them, and to interfere in the core of their work just because we want to.

We also appeal to the retired group who support the adoption of the grant law to abandon their selfishness at the expense of their insured children and grandchildren and workers in the public and private sectors. What they will get is harmful to the institution’s investments, and its ability to continue in the future to abide by its commitments towards them and towards the rest of its participants.

This law, if passed in its current form, will inevitably be challenged for its constitutionality. There are also constitutional flaws in the request to hold a special session to discuss it as it lacks the nature of “urgent matters.” I will endeavor to form a front of the Fund’s participants, who are directly affected by the law, if passed, in order to challenge it before the Constitutional Court.

I am not against the interest of the retirees as I fall among this category. I have no doubt that there is a segment of them who suffer a lot as a result of their low salaries, and the small increase they receive annually on their salaries.

The best solution to the problem of some of them lies either in forming committees from the Ministry of Social Affairs and PIFSS to look into the cases of those requesting a salary adjustment, or raising the current minimum wage for retirees.

As for spending large sums of money on each retiree, regardless of his/her urgent and fatal need for the amount through an unconstitutional session is absurd!

We rely on the wisdom of the Speaker and members of the National Assembly to reach a correct decision that does not result in damage to the Institution and does not deprive the retired person of his right to a better life.

e-mail: [email protected]

By Ahmad alsarraf

This news has been read 12724 times!

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