Administration problems lie in store for hyper-fund
The government’s plan for the creation of a social security hyper-fund with 3.5 million workers and 2.6 million pensioners is expected to lead to a new wave of protest and industrial action.
Experts say that the Labor Ministry’s central aim for the creation of a single set of rules, terms and conditions for social security and pensions for all salary workers, freelancers, self-employed people, farmers and seamen is in the right direction, but add that it will take at least a decade for the ambitious target for the creation of a single social security entity (EFKA) to be implemented.
Within 2016 the combined assets of the fund, worth some 15 billion euros, will be put under a single administration, but unionists and the representative of fund members say that the government is eyeing the funds’ cash reserves to temporarily cover the liquidity problem of the system.
They told Kathimerini that it will not be easy to overcome the immediate problems, such as the different legislation that exists for salary workers, the self-employed or the farmers, the different ways contributions and pensions are calculated, the incompatible online systems, the buildings, the funds’ staff and so on.
