NA employees opposed to compulsory pension scheme

60 employees of Armenia’s National Assembly on Sunday, February 1, launched a signature collection campaign against the introduction of the compulsory component of the accumulative pension system in Armenia. They thus joined “I am against” civil initiative, according to panorama. am. One of the employees told the correspondent of panorama.am that in January they were unpleasantly surprised to learn that compulsory pension deductions were made from their salaries, while many hoped that the well-known decision of the Constitutional Court had changed something in the situation.

The parliament’s spokeswoman Gohar Poghosian told Aysor.am that she did not know that parliamentary employees have joined the initiative against the introduction of the compulsory component, but she said that a number of parliamentary employees filed an application to the staff chief, asking him not to make deductions from their salaries for accumulative pension.

We would remind you that members of ‘I am against compulsory accumulative pension system’ initiative announced that despite the Constitutional Court’s decision, accumulative pension deductions are made from the salaries of employees of all the state institutions.

The compulsory accumulative pension system was introduced in Armenia on January 1, 2014. Under the new law on accumulative pensions, citizens born after 1974 will have to pay 5% of their wages to special accumulative funds, and the state will pay another 5%. The opponents of this scheme say that its compulsory character violates citizens’ rights and contradicts the Constitution.

Four factions of the Armenian parliament – Prosperous Armenia Party (BHK), ARFD, Armenian National Congress (HAK), and Heritage factions are opposed to the compulsory accumulative component’s introduction. They applied to the Constitutional Court, asking it to recognize the new law as anti-constitutional.

On January 24 the Constitutional Court suspended Article 76 and Article 86 part 3 of the Law on Accumulative Pensions pending the final decision about the constitutionality of several provisions of the law, in particular Articles 5,7,8,37,38, 45, 49, and 86.