Opposition political party accuses communists of deluding pensioners who voted them

The Liberal Party (LP) has called the state authorities to increase pensions up to the minimum value of the consumer basket, as well as the wages of the state-paid personnel. Vice-president of LP Dorin Chirtoaca told a news conference on Wednesday, March 21, that this way there would be avoided ridiculous situations when pensioners receive MDL 180-300 while the minimum consumer basket is MDL 1700. At the same time, Chirtoaca says that the ministers and MPs have wages of MDL 7-8 thousand and have businesses of thousands of euros. According to the cited source, the communist MPs should have a totally different attitude towards pensioners, because communists are governing thanks to old people’s nostalgia, exploited in elections. President of LP Mihai Ghimpu mentioned the inequity occurring when high officials and high-ranked militaries receive high pensions, compared with the miserable pensions of the employed persons. According to him, pensioners who were previously earning supplementary money with the entrepreneur patents, were deprived of this possibility and have no possibility to go abroad. Two pensioners from Hancesti raion, attending the conference, said that nowadays aged person are almost despaired: the miserable pension can not even cover expenses for food, while they have to buy firewood and natural gas. They say that humanitarian aids are not reaching them, the vacation tickets are given only to those who have high-ranked relatives, police force them out of business in marketplaces, indexations of the deposits at the Economy Bank are miserable, all this backed by a continuous increase in prices. One of the pensioners, Vasile Lazar, said that all the promises of the communists about the increase in pensions were only electoral lies because he says that “not a single MP spoke in the Parliament about the problems of the pensioners”. At present, the minimum subsistence amount is of MDL 840, and the average pension – MDL 460. The minimum value of the pension is MDL 336.4 for the persons employed in the national economy and MDL 299.5 – for the persons working in the agricultural field. The disability allowance constitutes MDL 239-162 depending on the degree, and that for the loss of the provider – MDL 244-431 depending on the number of family members. The persons employed in the agricultural sector continue to receive the smallest wages – MDL 750, and those from the budgetary field have an average wage of MDL 1400. According to the Government, in 2006 pensions were raised by 15.7%, in 2005 – by 18.2%, in 2004 – by 22.3%, in 2003 – by 19.3%.