How Can One Survive on Such Miserable Pension? :: Charter'97 :: News

I address two newspapers at the same time, hoping that my request will be helped. The motive for my doing that was the following: I worked for 43 years, 8 months and 16 days. At least that’s how it’s written in my labor records. I worked for 26 years as a surgeon and wrote a candidate’s thesis on the urgent surgical aid. In 1990 there happened a tragedy in my life – my sister and her husband died, while I fell seriously ill and became a disabled person. I could only work as a medic in the ambulance care, but not as a surgeon anymore. And now, on September 25 I turned 60. I went to apply for the pension and grieved over the treatment that we receive from the state.

Registration of one’s pension is a torture. And the sum is ludicrous. For all the years that I worked, all my troubles and misfortunes, for frequently working without days-off and holidays, getting miserable wages, I earned a pension of 73,674 rubles. Let me ask them now: “How can one live on that money?” It’s hardly enough to buy bread and milk, let alone to dress oneself. The prices are skyrocketing all the time and I can no longer earn for a living owing to disability.

That’s the care that my state has for me. I recall my rough adolescence. The parents almost worked free-of-charge, living in misery. My father died long ago – he was a Second World War veteran. He fought for a better future, let it be accursed. My mother had two heart attacks following the tragic demise of her daughter. She is also a handicapped person, getting 47,300 rubles of compensation. In order to spare her from starvation death I took her to my house. Now I too have a “pension”. How do we deal with that now?

Stanislav PENYAVSKY, candidate of medical sciences, a Minsker