ATTITUDE OF SUCCESSIVE GOVERNMENTS REGARDING PENSIONERS

It is a sad situation for the elderly in this country, especially government servants who are pensioners. In recent times those who have retired do get a higher pension than those who retired many years ago , and its specially those who retired earlier who suffer with the vagaries that seem to affect the Pension department. Each government promises faithfully to attend to the various anomalies that affect those who retired in the mid nineties and late nineties, but so far nothing has been done to enable them to get a decent living income.

It was once said that government pensioners will get a cost of living allowance in keeping with the increasing costs of living , then another government promised that the anomalies would be rectified , but so far pensioners are suffering from the utopian promises that the consecutive governments continue to make. Considering that pensioners form a significant percentage of the voters perhaps a strongly constructed pensioner’s union may be able to influence the government !And that may happen one day in the near future.

The Department of Pensions which comes under the purview of the Ministry of Public Administration should realise that the pensioners who have become now faceless to the Ministry were once those who worked hard to carry out government policy. They often faced the peoples’ wrath because they were supposed to be lackadaisical but often their lackadaisical attitude occurred due to the fact that the successive governments tended to make them the scapegoats for their often continuously varying decisions.

It certainly behoves the governments’ to realize that often the pensioners have only the measly pension they receive not only to buy their daily provisions but sometimes to pay off house mortgages or loans they have obtained to tide over sudden financial costs. As is customary in Sri Lanka often the eldest son marries late as he waits till his younger siblings get married , and then when he becomes a pensioner he has yet not settled his own daughters’ in marriage or paid off his house mortgage or been able to pay the extra costs needed for the children’s education .

He is lucky if his wife is yet working else he has often to borrow for the monies he needs or sell the house he lives in .

With the perennial problem of the lack of jobs if pensioners are employed they are often paid a measly allowance. And on top of all these problems comes the increased payments now imposed on electricity water and fuel. And these bills have to be paid else the supply is cut off. And it is here that the vagaries of the Pension department affect the pensioners most. In early years pensioners were paid on a fixed date and this would be invariably before the 10th of the month . Since it came on a regular date pensioners considered it as a salary to disburse for the essential services they used. Now sadly enough the date changes ,in one month it is the 4th of 5th of the month that the pension is paid on the other months it is the 10th or 12th and the pensioner cannot adjust his payments properly due to the date changes.

If by chance he does not pay his electricity or water bill before the date given on the bill he fears that the services he receives will be stopped . Often from bitter experience he knows that he will suffer that fate!

Why cannot the Pensions Department as was done earlier fix a definite date for the often paltry pensions they pay and why doesn’t the successive government that promised to review pensions and attach a cost of living allowance to the pension do so ? Often they cele-

They often faced the peoples’ wrath because they were supposed to be lackadaisical but often their lackadaisical attitude occurred due to the fact that the successive governments tended to make them the scapegoats for their often continuously varying decisions

brate ‘Elders day’ with large media supplements but what the poor pensioners seek is something substantial to meet the cost of living and a reduced interest rate for the mortgages they have taken.

As is customary in Sri Lanka often the eldest son marries late as he waits till his younger siblings get married , and then when he becomes a pensioner he has yet not settled his own daughters’ in marriage or paid off his house mortgage or been able to pay the extra costs needed for the children’s education