The Socialist Party (PSRM) is condemning the ruling party’s intention to change the pension system as “yet another extremely painful blow dealt to Moldovans”.

“The PAS’s legislative proposal to increase the retirement age to 63 years for both women and men is antisocial and anti-people, aimed at further burdening the citizens of our country and which will further worsen the situation of people in Moldova”, reads a PSRM statement.

The opposition party criticized the intention of both increasing the retirement age “for saving 1.5 billion lei at the expense of pensioners” and abolishing the biyearly indexation of pensions. Against the backdrop of forecasts that inflation could exceed 15% next year, the changes would amount to “social genocide”, says PSRM .

PSRM is accusing PAS of “following in the footsteps of the Plahotniuc regime”, recalling that the Socialists reversed a law adopted by the PDM government to gradually increase the retirement age.

The Socialists added that they could “take to the streets together with the people” if PAS moves forward with the bill.

PAS is proposing to restore the gradual increase in the retirement age, to 63 years for women and men. The bill also introduces a long-career pension for the women who work at least 3 years longer than the standard contribution period and 5 years in the case of men.

Also, PAS proposes a revision of the pension indexation scheme. The indexation is to take place once a year, in April, based on last year’s inflation rate. But at the same time, a real coefficient of increase of the pension by 50% of the economic growth for the previous year is proposed.