Changes to pension plan a necessary evil: minister
Posted May 4, 2010 06:32:13 AM.
This article is more than 5 years old.
The finance minister says the civil service pension plan is broken, and cuts to retiree benefits are needed to fix it.
Graham Steele is responding to a protest held by more than 100 retired government workers at the legislature on Monday.
Roughly 150 pensioners held a protest against the government’s plan to cap their cost of living increases at 1.25 per cent a year for the next five years.
Steele says the changes are required because the plan is unsustainable, and retirees can’t be exempt from solving the problem.
“The problem is big enough that really everybody has to participate in the solution,” he said. “If there’s one group that is allowed to just continue on as they were before, that means somebody else has to pick up the cost.”
Retired civil servant Doreen O’Brien says she can’t afford the cuts as she gets just over $17,000 a year from her pension.
“This year we got no raise,” she said. “After five years if he (Steele) gets his way we’ll have no indexing.”
Steele says his government is taking the difficult, but necessary steps to face the problem.
