Rashid Bin Mohammed Al-Fouzan Al-Riyadh A large number of primarily elderly retirees cannot work again anywhere. Neither their age nor their physical prowess will enable them to take new jobs. The majority of these people receive monthly pensions of less than SR4,000. Many of them receive about SR1,800 or less at a time the average salaries in the Kingdom range between SR7,000 and SR7,500. There have been 571,000 retirees in the Kingdom of whom 429,000 are still alive. According to media reports, the accumulated monthly salaries of the retirees are about SR44 million. It is not easy to calculate the exact average pension because the wages vary greatly. I will, therefore, focus here on the category of retirees whose monthly pension is less than SR4,000. The Pension Fund and the Ministry of Finance have both refused to raise their pensions to SR4,000 which is the basic minimum income to meet the high cost of living. This refusal, in my opinion, is unfair to the retirees whose number is not very high and whose monthly pensions would not place the state under any burden. Many of these retirees do not have private homes, medical insurance or children to take care of them. They need help and assistance. We have to consider that the retirees need help from the government, especially the unfortunate few who do not have children to look after them. What will be their fate if the government does not support them, especially since they had served the government and society for long years? It is the duty of the government and its agencies to extend support to them. We should provide them with accommodation, uplift their living standard and take good care of them. This is the least we can do for them. The dilemma of the male and female retirees must resurface. I wrote a lot about this and I am doing this again now. We should not leave them alone to become poorer after retirement. There are ample financial resources which are not restricted to the Ministry of Finance alone. We have to combine efforts to create an institution that would take good care of them. Though this is an important step, we do not see any activity toward servicing this category of people who are asking for a solution to their problem from the government and society. If this problem is not duly solved it will snowball at all financial, social and psychological levels. This will have an adverse impact on the retirees. We should, therefore, provide them with an integrated and satisfactory standard of living.
