Rouiba Industrial Zone: “1,500 workers opt for retirement!”

The Secretary General of the Local Union of the UGTA of the industrial zone of Rouiba, east of Algiers, Mokdad Messaoudi, has revealed that 1,500 employees out of a total of 35,000 are due to go into retirement in January, 2017.

He added that 400 workers of the SNVI, former Sonacome have already submitted their relevant application files at the Boumerdes Pension Fund.

The Union official told “Echorouk” that this massive submission of departure applications for retirement is motivated by the recent statements of Prime Minister Abdelmalek Sellal, setting the date of December 31, 2016 as the deadline before the implementation of the new provisions contained in the new draft legislation before its coming into force on 1st January 2017.

In this line, the Council of Ministers examined and approved earlier this week a draft law amending and supplementing the retirement-related Law. 

This revision is intended to safeguard the national Pension Fund which faces a sharp increase in retirement files with no age requirements or proportional pensions, two systems set up in the 90s, on an exceptional and temporary basis, as the country was then grappling with large waves of dissolution of failing enterprises and the massive lay-off of employees.

The new text endorsed by the Council of Ministers confirms the principles of equality so as to regulate the retirement system, and also to safeguard the future of the National Pension Fund and the interests of retirees and finally to take account of the concerns expressed by the representatives of the workers:

1) Restoration of the requirement of a minimum age of 60 (55 for women) with a minimum of 15 years of work, to be eligible for retirement

(2) The possibility for the worker to seek additional five years of work with the prior agreement of the employer,

(3) The possibility for those workers performing arduous work (to be defined via a regulatory framework) to obtain a pre-retirement pension before the age of 60,

(4) And the possibility for workers engaged in highly skilled professions or loss-making (which will be defined through a regulatory framework) to exercise beyond the retirement age.