The Ministry of Labor and Social Affairs has promised that the pensions of dissidents will increase. If they have been paying contributions for a long enough time, their pension will be adjusted to the average amount.
The resort will also prepare an amendment to the law so that opponents of the communist regime without the necessary period of pension insurance do not have to apply for a reduction in conditions and the addition of a small pension. Minister of Labor Marian Jurečka (KDU-ČSL) said this to ČTK and the server iDnes.cz today. At the end of September, according to data from the Czech Social Security Administration (ČSSZ), the average pension amounted to 20,254 crowns.
Jiří Gruntorád, the signatory of Charter 77 and the founder of the library of samizdat and exile literature Libri prohibiti, has been on hunger strike in front of the government headquarters since Friday, November 17, due to the non-solution of the problem of low dissident pensions. He demands Jureček’s resignation. He welcomed the current proposals of the Minister of Labor, but he does not intend to end the hunger strike, he told ČTK today.
“I ordered that my colleagues from the Czech Social Security Administration send out all the participants of the third resistance and that we find out from our activity whether there are people among them who have not applied for the average pension to which they are entitled, so that we can do this ourselves. At the same time, we have instructed that we go through all requests to soften the severity of the law. If they have completed the insurance period and their pension is lower than the average, then they automatically have the option of receiving an average pension,” said Jurečka.
More about Jiří Gruntorád’s hunger strike
Charter 77 signatory Jiří Gruntorád is on hunger strike in front of the Government Office. He wants the resignation of Minister Marian Jurečka because, according to him, he has no moral integrity.
The reason for the small pensions of opponents of the communist regime is imprisonment, forced emigration or the inability to work. Thus, they could not pay the levies long enough. Many people were also not allowed to work in their profession and could only do auxiliary work with little earnings, which then translated into a low pension.
Dissidents can apply for the amount to be paid into the average pension and, if the required insurance period is not fulfilled, for the so-called mitigation of the severity of the law. The social administration and the ministry will then assess their case.
