Nora Biaggio, from the national movement of retirees, spoke with No te Duermas about the current situation of the pension funds.
In her first words about the new vetoed law, Nora explained that the law raises two important points that would not benefit the government “one is that it has to transfer the money that corresponds to the 13 provincial funds that have to do with the collection of national taxes that go to social security and that, by law, should also be transferred to the 13 provinces that have provincial funds because, if you are buying national taxes such as VAT, for example, and you have thousands of retirees who are not in ANSES, but are in the provincial funds, it is appropriate that a proportion of that national collection that is paid in each of those provinces also, then be transferred in a proportional manner to the provinces. And the other is that the law proposes the immediate payment of the final judgment of recalculation of salaries, which is also an issue that appears in the laws and is not fulfilled”
Regarding the alleged total or partial veto, he added that “it would be a total veto, that is, Milei has classified the deputies and senators who voted for this law as fiscal degenerates, and also the retirees, and he blames us for a fiscal deficit, when in reality he is using, and he has said it openly, the retirement funds to pay the debt with the International Monetary Fund, and he considers it a true feat to have reduced the purchasing power of retirees in the months he has been in government, more than what Macri reduced it, which was 20%, and Fernández, which was also around that. If today a retiree buys less than half of what he bought in 2017, and in 2017 what was earned was already miserable, we are below the poverty line”
The obligation for retirees represents 0.1% of the gross product
Nora said: “This small increase, which as we said in the plenary, is miserable but it is ours, is 0.1% of the Gross Product, that is, it is insignificant, what happens is that Milei has set up an economic framework that has not produced any benefit for the whole population, on the contrary, by creating a process of recession, it generates a brutal economic crisis”.
“It is already the employer sectors that are asking for the economic collapse to which the government is leading them to be resolved, and the closure of SMEs implies layoffs, implies less contributions to the pension fund”.
“We are going to the CGT, the CTA, to demand a national strike against the veto, and for the recomposition of pensions and for automatic mobility due to inflation and wages. We are going to concentrate on Wednesday as always in Congress, but apart from that we are going to march to Plaza de Mayo and we ask that all the union sectors, picketers, students, come to mobilize, and this is going to be a constant mobilization throughout the country until we manage to defeat the veto,” he added.
And he affirmed: “The struggle will continue, on the day of the retiree, which is September 20, we are going to hold a large open town hall meeting in Plaza de Mayo, inviting all the sectors of workers, youth and all that, to deliberate on the situation to which they have led us, the elderly, and to which they will lead the future retirees, because there is no future directly.”
The cut in medicines in PAMI and in the provincial social works
In her words, Nora highlighted the end of free medicines: “each retiree added the cost of medicines to the monthly expense. It is desperate, because now the dilemma is, how do I buy the medicines or pay the rates? There are already three elements that are grouped together behind the uncertainty of a person who earns 225 thousand pesos and who with the bonus earns 290 thousand”
“Everyone received monthly electricity and gas bills, of over 30 thousand pesos. If you start adding up, you have between the rates and the medicines, the pension is completely eaten up. Milei will have to answer how to support the elderly, who for him are a nuisance, he has said that the problem is that we live too long. So, he wants to kill us all”
“There is another trap here, if you have hyperinflation in December of almost 275%, and in January your pensions were increased by 12%, you are very far from the madness that was experienced in 2023. Afterwards, you were already left behind very deeply with respect to your purchasing power. If then every month a systematic inflation of above 4% was maintained, the calculations that are made are not that inflation fell, new inflation rates are added to the hyperinflation that we had at the end of the year,” Nora highlighted about the accumulated inflation rate.
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