At the end of 2019, as many as 270,000 pensioners were among the poorest 10% of Hungarians, going up from 26,000 in 2010, he said.Continue reading
The opposition coalition led by Péter Márki-Zay announced a joint opposition program to protect the elderly and pensioners. László Szakács, a candidate for the Democratic Coalition (DK), said that pensioners are only important to Viktor Orbán as the elections approach.
László Szakács, Member of Parliament from DK, recalled that in the past 12 years Viktor Orbán has only thought about pensioners when elections were approaching while spending much less than the EU average. Before the “panic spending” at the end of last year, it could be said that 1.2 million pensioners were living on less than 130,000 forints a month.
He considers inflation-linked pension increases to be a tragedy, because in this system “the poor get poorer and the rich get richer.”
Lajos Korózs assured the younger generation that “everyone will have a pension.” He stated that the “united opposition” would like to operate a social security-based pension system, ensure flexible retirement conditions, maintain the possibility for women to retire with 40 years of eligibility and the 13th-month benefit. The minimum level of the full retirement pension would be significantly increased, with the aim of reaching 50% of the net minimum wage, and fractional years would be included in the pension scheme. Their aim is to catch up low pensions and return to mixed indexation,” said the opposition MP.
“Pensioners can also see the transparent policy that Viktor Orbán is pursuing, as in the last ten years the government has taken away about 1.2 million forints from every pensioner by abolishing the Swiss indexation,” the candidate of the united opposition added. He also spoke about the situation of disabled pensioners and promised them justice.
Sources: HVG, Magyar Hang
Featured image: Lajos Korózs via Tibor llyés/MTI
