Savings on pensioners

After the January adjustment of pensions in Montenegro by 0,38 percent, news has arrived that the second annual adjustment from May 1st will not be "much larger", as recently announced by the director of the Pension and Disability Insurance Fund, but will amount to only 0,95 percent. We know, we felt it and there has been a lot of comment and commentary that the lowest pension of 450 euros, after two years of being held in the cold, has been increased by 1,71 euros as of January 01st, while, after the second increase of 4,29 euros, it will amount to 456 euros. Mashala!

There is no shortage of public comments, and they are all for a reason. The extraordinary increases in the minimum pension, according to the “ES2” program and earlier, have particularly aroused public discontent, where discrimination between pensioner groups was most often mentioned. Even those who populistly pity the large pensioner population still gossip about “small” pensioners. Politicians do this out of self-interest, because pensioners are the largest and most active constituency.

Living in troubled and turbulent times, we have not paid enough attention to the four-monthly pension adjustments in the past two years, and the following data shows what the freezing of the lowest pension meant during that period. The percentages of pension adjustments were taken from the Pension and Disability Insurance Fund documentation and the media:

01. 01. 24. - 2,08 percent; 01. 05. 24 - 1,93 percent; 01. 09. 24 - 2,4 percent;

01. 01. 25. – 6,85 percent; 01. 05. 25. – 3,1 percent; 01. 09. 25. – 1,98 percent.

If the lowest pension of 450 euros were adjusted according to the above percentages, its amount would increase from 450,00 to 583,63 euros, or by 88,63 euros, from 1 January 2024 to 1 September 2025. Thus, we would welcome the formal and humiliating pension adjustments in 2026 somewhat more prepared. Considering six four-month adjustments, a simple calculation shows that every pensioner with the lowest pension has been damaged by over 1.000 euros in two “ice” years! The savings for the state budget, on this basis, in the fourth quarter of 2025 alone amounted to around 15 million euros, and it is not difficult to calculate for two years. So, the freezing of the lowest pension was done not only so that other categories of pensioners would not be “hurt”, but also for the public interest, as they call budget savings. They give with one hand and take away with the other!

Of course, there are those who spend the budget money, and they always have little! It is necessary to finance not only the necessary expenses of the state administration, but also the megalomaniac appetites of civil servants, starting with the largest government in Europe, through the Parliament... etc. Elected representatives of the people and government officials, advisors and other civil servants enjoy travel, expensive hotels, rich meals, while numerous contractors are on duty in their offices, just to earn hefty fees. It is necessary to finance the remuneration of officials, which has been commented on for years, but there is no restriction. Acting officials are appointed, and after half a year new ones are appointed, and the previous ones are provided with a salary for a year, or until retirement, which those in charge often do deliberately, to give their party colleagues a pay rise. Millions of sums of public money are also spent on financing political parties, etc.

When I talk about pension adjustments, of course I mean the entire pensioner population, people who are at risk due to their age, poor health and increased need for family care and the care of the entire social community. In addition to the dissolution of families and the withering away of kinship ties, which time has brought, could they not be hit by a greater misfortune than the accelerated collapse of the health and pension system?! Salaries and the lowest pension have increased, which is commendable, especially in years of high inflation, but we have a health system that is not centered on patients, and a pension system that cannot provide pensioners with a life worthy of old age.

According to the latest data, around 107-110.000 Montenegrins are over 65 years old, and the state has no strategy to make the life of the large elderly population bearable. We have several nursing homes, with a total accommodation capacity of around 1.044 beds, we have an insufficient number of geronto housewives, a large but never sufficient number of volunteers of the Red Cross of Montenegro, an insufficient number of day care centers for the elderly, small pensions that cannot feed the beneficiaries and pay for utilities, let alone the costs of treatment in the PZU, caregivers and the like.

Many “kitchens” in all systems, including ours, are inaccessible to the public, but in recent days there has been a lot of talk about soup kitchens in Montenegro, which operate under the auspices of local governments or the Serbian Orthodox Church. Proud and humiliated poor citizens are forced to use the services of soup kitchens, and there are not enough of them either. A few days ago, the pvinformer.me portal published an article stating that “soup kitchens in the north of Montenegro cannot meet the needs of all people who are in an unenviable position”. It is known that the poverty rate in the north is almost twice as high as in the central and coastal regions, so the need for opening soup kitchens was expressed by socially vulnerable citizens in the municipalities of Plav, Gusinje, Andrijevica, Petnjica, Kolašin and Mojkovac. It is known that soup kitchens have been operating in Berane, Bar, Podgorica and Nikšić for a long time. It is worth noting that the existing soup kitchens are mainly financed by sponsors, unless some “soup kitchens-now” program is introduced. Officials from the top of the state are not ashamed of their lack of concern for the huge number of citizens of Montenegro. On the contrary, we often hear them say: "Life has never been better!"