In recent days, a group of so-called proportional pensioners has addressed the Pension and Disability Insurance Fund and the Ministry of Labor and Social Welfare, so that they too would be included in the amendment to the Pension and Disability Insurance Act, which the Government must do at the request of the Constitutional Court.
"Given that due to the decision of the Constitutional Court it is necessary to soon amend the Law on PIO, I would like to remind you not to forget to propose this amendment to the Government in relation to proportional pensioners so that we do not have to exercise our constitutional rights in our own and international courts", stated is in the letter submitted to "Vijesti".
Proportionate pensioners acquired the right to a pension by combining the length of service they had from two or more former Yugoslav republics, based on interstate agreements. The pension fund of each country has calculated the amount of pension that should be paid to them for the length of service they had in its territory.
There are about 11 of these pensioners in Montenegro, and according to the current Law on PIO, the minimum pension limit does not apply to them, so most of them receive significantly lower amounts. For the most part, they did not even receive one-time aid that was distributed by the Government in the past years.
At last year's protests by pensioner groups, data was announced that there are two to three thousand of these pensioners with a total income of less than 100 euros, as well as that they are "below any poverty line". At that time, it was stated that there are eight thousand commensurate pensioners whose incomes are below the then minimum pension of about 260 euros.
Former Minister of Finance Aleksandar Damjanović said at the beginning of this year that they are preparing an amendment to the law with the Ministry of Labor and Social Welfare that would allow these pensioners to collect the total amount of all pensions they receive from the former republics, and then additionally pay the difference up to the amount of the average pension in Montenegro.
The blockade of the Assembly then made it impossible for the former Government to send that amendment to the Law to the parliamentary procedure.
"Vijesti" is waiting for an answer from the new Ministry of Labor and Social Welfare, as the competent department, whether they will use the amendment to the Law on PIO requested by the Constitutional Court to include norms for the regulation of proportional pensions.
"As you yourself know, with the earlier amendment of Article 29 of the Law on PIO, this group of pensioners was prevented from exercising the right to a minimum pension, despite the fact that some incomes are below the established minimum," stated the letter of the corresponding pensioners.
The Constitutional Court, with its decision to abolish the provision of Article 17 paragraph 1 of the Law on PIO, according to which women could retire at the age of 64 and men at the age of 66 if they had a minimum of 15 years of service, obliged the Government to within 30 days "Submit to the Parliament of Montenegro a draft law that will regulate the right to old-age pension of the insured (man, woman) in accordance with the Constitution, in accordance with the legal positions of the Constitutional Court expressed in this decision". That period begins to run from the day the decision is published in the Official Gazette, that is, from October 3.
The group of proportionate pensioners believes that this deadline can be used to include the earlier proposal to equalize their incomes with the minimum pension through the law amendment procedure.
This problem arose because the Montenegrin PIO Fund does not have data on how much proportionate pensioners receive from other countries, which is why it could not even pay them one-off benefits because it did not have data on the difference between their total income and the amount of the minimum pension, which was criteria for aid payment.
In Croatia and Bosnia and Herzegovina, legal norms have been adopted according to which these pensioners should submit a request to their funds, along with documentation on the amounts of other pensions they receive, and then they would receive compensation from the amount of their total pensions up to the value of the minimum pension.
For 16 years of service in two countries, a pension of 79 euros
One of the beneficiaries of proportional pensions told "Vijesta" that with 16 years of service, of which 11 in Montenegro, she receives a total pension of 79 euros, which she cannot even survive on.
"I worked in the representative office of a company from Slovenia, and in that period of the joint state, I did not even know that part of the internship was paid to the Fund from Slovenia. Back then, it didn't even matter because everything was a common state. But now it has become important because for the four years that I lack in the Montenegrin internship, I receive 79 instead of 300 euros. I am a mother of three children, but I also missed out on this benefit because I did not meet the requirements," said this user.
Another comparable pensioner said that he receives 120 euros from Montenegro and five euros from Serbia for two years of service in that country.
"When I retired, I needed those two years to fulfill the requirements, and there was not too much of a difference between my part of the Montenegrin pension and the then minimum. However, due to the increase in the minimum pension, a big difference has now appeared. If I didn't have those two years of experience in Serbia, now instead of 120, I would be receiving a 300 euro pension, which is a big difference. "If the minimum is increased to 450 euros, and for us it is proportional to regular adjustments of two to three percent, the difference will be even greater," said this pensioner.
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