Minister of Social Affairs and Employment Wouter Koolmees has ’embraced’ the advice to meet the state pension shortfall of thousands of Surinamese elderly. Although that makes some elderly people hopeful, there is also skepticism. Ingrid Haagstam, whose mother only partially receives a state pension, has little faith in it: “Embrace means nothing yet. You can embrace it and do nothing with it at all.”
The issue has been going on for decades: in May 1956 the General Old Age Pensions Act (AOW) came into effect. This law regulates a basic pension for all Dutch nationals who live in the Netherlands 50 years before they reach retirement age. For every year that you lived abroad, two percent of your AOW will be deducted.
Surinamese-Dutch elderly people fall between two stools if they lived in Suriname between 1956 and 1975. In that period Suriname was part of the Kingdom of the Netherlands, but the country is now seen as a foreign country for the state pension.
“I feel sorry for people my mother’s age,” says Haagstam. “Or people who didn’t build that up, or who came to the Netherlands later, those people, they have a problem,” says Haagstam. “My mother came here when she was thirty-eight. Can you imagine, from her fifteenth to thirty-eight years, then you are missing a very large part.”
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