Algeria: Change In the Retirement System Slated For 2017

The Secretary-General of the UGTA Trade Union, Abdelmajid Sidi Said, has intervened as a firefighter in order to put out the fire of rising protests in the major industrial zone of Rouiba (east of Algiers) at the baffling decision taken last week by the tripartite meeting concerning the vexed retirement issue.

As a matter of fact, the tripartite meeting’s flabbergasting decision to set from now onwards the official age limit at 60 years of age for Algerian workers to be eligible for a retirement pension has sparked off a wave of utter discontent among a large number of workers in all sectors of activity.

Thus, the previous possibility for workers to apply for early retirement without complying with the 60 year-old age limit has now been scrapped by the tripartite meeting which met on June 5th 2016 in Algiers bringing together the government, the employers’ confederation and the UGTA general workers’ union.

In his intervention to allay the fears of the workers, the UGTA Secretary General assured the workers and trade unionists that the retirement system won’t be affected by any change during the current 2016 and the change decided by the latest tripartite meeting will be operational only as from 2017.

But questions have emerged  in the labour world about those workers who would be targeted by the joint instruction of the Ministry of Labour and the Civil Service, to freeze the pre-retirement requests, without the age requirement, and if this guideline excludes economic institutions and if it applies to all administrative departments or not.

To this effect, the Secretary General of the local union of the Rouiba industrial zone, Massoudi Mekdad, said in a statement to “Echorouk” that UGTA leader Sidi Said had pledged to workers and trade unionists that the current retirement system will witness no change during the year 2016, and will remain as it is, stressing that the projected alterations will happen in the course of 2017 and not before.