This week, the Pensioners’ Association raged against the government, after a proposal which according to the association does that pensioners lose two billion kroner.
Now both Rødt and Frp announce that they will try to sort it out.
– This is a pension robbery. Through a calculation trick, one has avoided giving the pensioners what they have been promised. I perceive this as a breach of intention, and something we must try to sort out in the Storting, says Mímir Kristjánsson (Red)
– It was an important breakthrough for Frp to remove the under-regulation of pensions, because it led to the pensioners’ purchasing power being weakened. I am therefore incredibly disappointed on behalf of all the pensioners who do not get the increase in purchasing power that they with good reason had expected for this year, says FRP leader Sylvi Listhaug.
Read the case here: – The government will take two billion kroner from the pensioners.
– Petty from the state
In the previous parliamentary term, the Labor Party, the Green Party, the Socialist People’s Party and the Socialist People’s Party reached an agreement in the Storting on how pensions should be regulated. Simply explained:
From the pension reform in 2011 until now, pensions have increased in line with wage growth and have since been deducted 0.75 per cent. Going forward, the pension will be equal to the average of wage and price growth, but not higher than wage growth.
Last year, the average wage growth was 3.5 per cent. This is 1.1 percentage points higher than the wage growth that was assumed when the authorities introduced the pension regulation. According to the Pensioners’ Association, there is a long tradition of correcting this discrepancy, and the association expected the pension to follow suit.
The surprise was therefore great in the Pensioners’ Association’s ranks when the government proposed to give pensioners half of this backlog. This amounts to a loss of two billion kroner for the pensioners – or around 1,500 kroner per pensioner, according to Rødt’s calculations.
– This is petty from the state. Over time, pensioners have received poorer advice with galloping electricity bills and an under-regulated pension, and yet these calculator scams have robbed them of NOK 1,500 each. It is not small money for a minimum pensioner, says Kristjánsson.
State Secretary Truls Wickholm (Labor Party) told Nettavisen earlier this week that the Pensioners’ Association probably would not have argued as strongly if wage growth had been lower than the ministry’s estimates. Read the full answer in the case here.
Also read: Raymond Johansen snorts at the criticism after a billion crack: – Oslo is not an island
Hoping for another round
The case is now being considered by the Labor and Social Affairs Committee. The committee has until 1 March to submit its recommendation.
– If I know the ministry correctly, they know how to save money when they see an opportunity for it. We politicians, on the other hand, have a different task vis-à-vis the population, and here we see that the pensioners are cheated for NOK 1,500, says Kristjánsson.
He hopes that the parties in the Storting will now come together to clean up. Kristjánsson points out that the state does not lack money after having raked in sky-high oil pricesgas and force lately.
Sylvi Listhaug points out that there is a long tradition for deviations between estimates and actual growth to be corrected in social security settlements.
– It is unheard of for the government not to follow it up, she says.
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