The government is focusing its efforts on supplementary pensions to reduce the accumulated stock of applications that are delayed for more than a year in order to be cleared and distributed to the beneficiaries.
For this reason, the Minister of Labor Ms Niki Kerameos visited the e-EFKA Pension Awarding Center yesterday in order to be informed about the progress of the pending pensions, but also to send the message of the importance the government attaches to the de-escalation of the problem.
The promises for supplementary pensions
“We seek to constantly improve the service to the citizen” he said characteristically noting that the ministry’s priority is to further improve the relevant awarding times, reduce the pending cases related to supplementary pensions, pay the outstanding amounts in one go and speed up the service to the citizens from the Disability Certification Center.
Parliamentary budget office data on supplementary pensions
According to the data included in the report of the budget office of the Parliament during the first half of 2024, 92,500 applications for the award of supplementary pension were pending at a cost of 160 million euros. Of these, 74,500 had exceeded the three-month period within which payment decisions should have been issued and were added to the overdue supplementary pensions that were unpaid.
Out of the stock of 74,500 supplementary pensions, 44,000 had the prospect of being issued, as the rest either could not be issued because the decision on the main pension, which is a condition for the granting of the supplementary pension, had not been issued, or belonged to difficult cases with insufficient supporting documents, consecutive insurance etc.
The remaining 18,000 applications from the total backlog were pending for less than 3 months and were not considered overdue.
The rates of grant of supplementary pensions
According to the briefing that the Minister of Labor had at the pension awarding center, the data on the progress being made in the EFKA on this issue show the following:
From January 2021 to October 2024, 920,000 main pension decisions have been issued, with the average rate of main pension decisions now exceeding 1,000 decisions per day compared to the 500 issued before 2021.
The average time to award a pension has been reduced to 58 days. It is worth noting that before 2021 the average time to grant a pension exceeded 500 days, while today it has decreased by approximately 90%.
Specifically for the awards of supplementary pensions and lump sums, from December 2022 to August 2024 overdue supplementary pensions were reduced by a total of 34,000 and specifically, from 83,000 to less than 33,000, a number that translates into a 60% reduction. In fact, last August a 12% reduction was achieved in overdue supplementary pensions compared to last July. At the same time, from March 2023 to September 2024, a reduction of 12,300 overdue lump-sum payments has been achieved, namely from 22,500 to 10,200 outstandings, i.e. a reduction of approximately 55%.
It is worth noting that the total number of supplementary pensions issued from December 2022 to August 2024 amounted to 168,000, of which 72,500 were awarded automatically (43.1% of cases). Accordingly, the one-off decisions issued through the automated process from March 2023 to September 2024 amount to 26,000.
Source: ot.gr
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