The Croatian Pensioners' Party (HSU) believes that a planned one-off payment of 100 kuna to pensioners before elections is an expression of utter impudence and a brazen attempt to buy pensioners' dignity, because the very same government has so far taken a billion kuna from them, HSU leader Silvano Hrelja said on Wednesday.
Hrelja organised a press conference following unofficial announcements that the government would pay pensioners a lump sum of 100 kuna by the end of the year instead of adjusting their pensions to salary growth.
"This is a manipulation by the government," Hrelja said, adding that the pensioners had already paid a crisis tax and a health contribution they should not have paid, that pensions had been frozen for the last two years and had not been adjusted to salaries, let alone to living costs which had increased by 3.1 per cent.
"All that has led to a decline in the pensioners' living standards of 7 per cent, and 400 million kuna has been taken from the pensioners' pockets. And now it has occurred to someone to give the pensioners 100 kuna and again fool the people whom they have robbed of their dignity," Hrelja said.
The HSU said it could not believe that the government's plan was backed by the representatives of pensioners in the National Council for Pensioners, of which the HSU is not a member.
However, Hrelja supported the government's intention to have a pension bonus included in the pension base as of next year, adding that the HSU had put forward such a request in 2007, but that it had been rejected by the government.
