October 14, 2022
The large number of protests held around the country ever since Now Ruz by pensioners under the Social Security system has finally pushed the government into responding by agreeing to a 38 percent hike in their pensions, replacing the 10 percent the government had announced at Now Ruz.
The pension increase will be retroactive to Now Ruz.
The hike should quiet the pensioners, who have been surprisingly active in damning the government and demanding a higher cost-of-living hike. But many in the regime are certain to be concerned that the success of the pensioners will just spark more protests by others with demands to make of the government.
The hike applies to pensioners under the Social Security system that covers about 2.4 million retirees or about 10 percent of the country’s households. It does not cover retirees from the civil service, who come under a separate pension program. But reports have been circulating that the government will soon boost civil service pensions by 38 percent as well.
The pensioners became furious when the Labor Ministry announced just before Now Ruz that the minimum wage was being raised 63.6 percent. This came at the end of a year in which the inflation rate measured by the government’s Statistical Center totaled 35.4 percent. The 63.6 percent covered inflation for the past year as well as for the previous two years in which the minimum wage hike was far below inflation.
The Social Security pensioners were given a hike of just 10 percent at Now Ruz. Very soon, the pensioners began demonstrating almost every day in some town or city around the country, and often in dozens of cities at the very same time.
The protests by pensioners were the largest number of protests seen around the country since Now Ruz, until the last month’s anti-regime activities. And unlike protests on a variety of other issues, the pensioners never stopped protesting which may have been the key to convincing the government to raise the annual cost of living increase to cover the actual rise in the cost of living.