By Chrysostomos Tsoufis

Fast Track awarding procedures and supplementary pensions brings the Ministry of Labor with the mini insurance bill it has prepared. The bill, which aims to come out in public consultation in mid-October and to be voted on by mid-November, drastically changes the way supplementary pensions are issued for those that are pending. With the new system, 4,500 marks or 15 years of insurance (regardless of whether it is with one institution or whether it is consecutive insurance) will be enough to get the supplementary pension, something that currently only applies to IKA-ETAM. According to EFKA officials, it concerns a little more than 40,000 pending in some cases even 7 years. The only condition is that the insured’s main pension has been issued.

With this arrangement, the Ministry of Labor believes that the process will be unblocked and if everything goes according to plan, by the end of the year the pending adjuncts will not exceed 20,000.

Despite the fact that the union of the insurance funds has taken place, the calculation of the supplementary pension is based on the rules of the respective fund to which the insured belonged. For example, in the State, the DEKOs and the banks, in order for an insured person to get an auxiliary pension, he needed 25 years of insurance to receive it at 67 (even if he had retired much earlier) or 35 years of insurance to receive it before 67. These insured persons now acquire the right to a supplementary pension after 15 years. It goes without saying that EFKA will continue the calculation, simply until the process is completed, the pensioner will receive the money corresponding to 15 years. After the calculations have been completed – if he has, for example, 25 years of supplementary insurance – he will also receive the rest of the money retroactively.

It is these calculations that delay the entire awarding process, especially in cases of consecutive or parallel insurance. For old pensioners, things become even more difficult because EFKA employees have to search the warehouses, find the paper stamps and calculate the insurance life as the stamps have been in digitized form since 2002.

His coffers Publiccommercial employees, legal are some of the funds in which the longest delays are observed.

As far as the outstanding main pensions are concerned, the situation is much better as around 32,000 are outstanding which are considered difficult as the insured have debt or consecutive insurance or were also insured abroad. The situation is even better in the one-off cases, as about 4,000 are pending in the public sector and 5-6,000 in the private sector.

The bill will also include one more regulation that will speed up the issuance procedures as it foresees an increase in the debt limit so that someone can retire on the condition that they agree to the lifting of bank secrecy.

The bill will also include provisions for professional funds but the abolition of the penalty of withholding 30% of the pension for retired workers.