Kyrgyz Pensioners Unhappy About Small Pensions

Excerpt from report by state-owned Kyrgyz Television 1 on 11 June

[Presenter] The president’s decree has raised the pensions by 10 per cent and now its average amount stands at 1,240 soms [about 44 dollars]. However, there are a lot of people who are not happy. Old Kyrgyz people say that prices have left their pensions far behind and it is not easy to keep pace with them at such speed. Cholpon Arkabayeva has her report on what the country’s older generation is complaining about:

[Lyudmila Pavlovna, a pensioner] Pensions are now very small. Needless to say, go to a market and you will see that nothing costs 1,000 soms and a 1,000-1,500-som pension is nothing. An old woman will spend half of it on transport. Many [officials] promise to raise pensions.

[Correspondent] In line with the Kyrgyz president’s decree, the government’s expenses for raising the insurance part of pensions will amount to 235m soms until the end of the year. The insurance part of all pensions will rise. To maintain the total amount of pensions, compensation payments have been provided for.

[Marat Sultanov, the head of the Kyrgyz Social Fund] The president’s decree is aimed at protecting socially-vulnerable sections of the population, particularly pensioners, from the current price rises on the market. The national statistics committee has given us the figures saying that inflation has been 10.4 per cent over the last five months. An idea has been suggested that the amount of pension should always be higher than inflation rates. Therefore, we have decided to increase the insurance part of pensions by 10 per cent.

[Passage omitted: the report says that next rises in pension will depend on inflation rates]

Originally published by Kyrgyz Television 1, Bishkek, in Russian 1400 11 Jun 08.

(c) 2008 BBC Monitoring Central Asia. Provided by ProQuest Information and Learning. All rights Reserved.