The Second World War was over 66 ago, and most of its protagonists are
not among us anymore. However, 13.200 Albanian senior citizens have been
registered as protagonists of the Antifascist Liberating War and
benefit supplementary pension.
“Shqip” newspaper says that the Social Insurance Institution (SII) indicate that the state budget will spend 437 million ALL for the veterans who have had different functions during the war. They benefit 27.000 ALL per month, in average. SII predicts to make this bill smaller in the future.
Thousands could be lying
The fact that the war was over 66 years ago, with the youngest partisan being 14 years old in 1944 shows that the persons who receive this pension should be at least 80 years old today. But most of the partisans were more than 14, and this means that these persons should be around 85 years old today. The problem is that Albania has only 17.000 people over 85 years old, only 6000 of whom are men.
Chances are that we will never know the number of senior citizens who have lied for their involvement in war. The veteran status can be received based on a law of 1994, which accepts all kind of documents as evidence.
The Social Insurance scheme is full of small manipulations that are created by the lack of a proper economic scheme for the people who need assistance. Thousands of Albanians over 50 years of age are unemployed. INSTAT says that 13rd of the Albanians over 50 years and 23rd of the Albanians over 60 are not part of the working force, and that their only hope is that one day they will receive pension.
Hundreds of them make small manipulations, although pensions remain still very low. The government has approved a special law for treating these cases, by sanctioning the pensioners who have manipulated, by obliging them to return the money.
But even these efforts for manipulating with the pensions have not resolved the poverty issue among the senior citizens of Albania.
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