By Elias Hazou
PRESIDENT Nicos Anastasiades and House Speaker Yiannakis Omirou said on Wednesday that they would be waiving their entitlement to an MP’s pension, shortly after reports that 126 currently serving officials will start receiving, in addition to their salary, pension payouts for posts previously held in the state sector.
In a brief statement, Anastasiades said he would waive the right to an MP’s pension for the duration of his presidency.
Anastasiades served as a deputy for the DISY party from 1981 to February 28, 2013, when he assumed office as President of the Republic.
Likewise Omirou, who has been House Speaker since 2011, said that as long as he holds this post he will not take an MP’s pension.
Although the Treasury has determined Omirou’ status to be House Speaker, rather than MP, and that he is thus entitled to a deputy’s pension (he is over 60 years old), Omirou has said he still considers himself to be a serving MP and will temporarily waive the right to the pension.
The issue came to the fore after daily Politis broke the story that 126 currently serving state officials will as of this month start receiving pension cheques for posts previously held in the state sector.
The extra cost of these pension payouts is estimated at around €2m a year.
In addition to Anastasiades and Omirou, the officials include foreign minister Ioannis Kasoulides, labour minister Zeta Emilianidou, the Attorney-general, the ombudswoman, mayors, community leaders and members of the Public Service Commission.
It’s understood that Kasoulides, Emilianidou as well as Attorney-general Costas Clerides have also waived their right to pension payouts for posts they formerly held in the civil service.
The payouts are starting now because the Treasury has just finished tracking down all the officials entitled to the perk. The pensions will include back payments going back to October last year when the Supreme Court ruled that state officials called out of retirement to serve in a different position should get both their salary and their pension from the previous post.
The top court was handing down a verdict on an appeal filed by 52 former and current public sector and semi-governmental officials who had been denied their pension while they were drawing a salary.
The Supreme Court had found an article of the State Officials on Pensions Act of 2011 to be unconstitutional.
The contentious article in the Act mandated that no official should receive a pension while being employed by the state.
That legislation, drafted by the House, had come as a response to the fact that officials were receiving multiple pensions as a result of having served in more than one post in their career.
It was part of a broader drive to trim the public sector payroll.
But the Supreme Court said the article was in breach of the constitution, which protects private property. The court concluded that a pension should be considered as property and as such is protected under the constitution.
It said that while private property laws can be suspended when it comes to the common interest, the state did not sufficiently prove that this was the case.
Now, in addition to the €2m extra cost to the 126 officials, the Treasury will be coughing out another €2.5m a year to the 52 persons who had won their appeal with the Supreme Court. Unlike the others, these 52 are entitled to pension back-pay going back to May 2011, when the State Officials on Pensions Act was passed.
According to Politis, the Treasury has meantime rejected requests by 33 more people who had sought retroactive pension payouts (from May 2011) in the wake of the Supreme Court’s ruling.
The payouts in question concern those people who are paid by the Treasury. But Politis said that additionally there are a number of persons currently in the state sector who are entitled to pensions from semi-governmental organisations in which they previously worked. If these persons have also claimed pensions from their former SGO employer, that would inflate the amount of the payouts even more.
Lawmakers, meanwhile, are expected to take another shot on Thursday at prohibiting concurrent salaries and pensions, by formulating a new bill, this time in such a way as not to contravene the constitution.
