The Greek government intends to introduce a new measure to help the self-employed struggling with overdue debts to the OAEE pension fund, Labour Minister George Katrougalos revealed in an interview with Athens-Macedonian News Agency (ANA) on Sunday. Under the new regime starting in 2017, those insured at OAEE can have their old debts ‘put in hibernation’ provided they are up to date with current payments, and thus be issued documents they don’t have outstanding debts to the state and social insurance funds.
“The self-employed workers that were outside the system could not pay off their old social insurance contributions. If they start paying their current contributions from January 1, 2017 they will be considered up to date insurance-wise and we will put the old debt ‘on hold’ and see how we will deal with it,” Katrougalos explained.
The labour minister said that this would be one of the key issues that the government will negotiate with the institutions.
He also announced that a measure restricting the amount of backdated payments for pensioners to 10 pct of their pension would be added to a bill coming to Parliament next week.
The minister repeated that there will be no cuts to pensions where the main and supplementary pension is less than 1,300 euros in total, saying that this represented 20 pct of pensioners. He admitted, however, that most pensioners will see some small reduction and that roughly 5 pct will see their pensions slashed by as much as 40 pct.
Asked about the prospect of job losses in the media after the closure of television channels, Katrougalos said the government would seek to ensure that employees received all the compensation due under the law, initiating legal action against those that failed to comply, while also listing incentives that the government intends to provide to protect jobs, such as the ’employment cheque’ to subsidise jobs.
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