Greek government will “compensate” with a total of 50 million euro the poverty allowance (EKAS) cuts to more than 158,000 low-pensioners who saw the little monthly extra being removed from their income since June.
The EKAS cuts is a bailout agreement precondition since the 2. bailout of 2012.
In the context of governmental Social Policy, Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras announced a small package of benefits for those pensionerss deprived of the EKAS.
These benefits are:
- exemption from the self-participation in prescription medicine
- exemption from the 6% healthcare contribution for those who were receiving 30-euro EKAS
- Solidarity Card for food purchases for those deprived of 115-euro EKAS
- Those with more than 80% disability will have EKAS reimbursed
- If both spouses lost the EKAS, one of them will have it restored
The state saving from cutting the EKAS is 200 million euro.
It is more than obvious that the new benefits will not compensate the loss of the poverty benefit.
I could sit down and calculate benefit by benefit and EKAS loss for real life low-pensioners. But I won’t.
Fact is that the new benefits are just drops of some kind of sweet medicine so that the poor pensioners can swallow the bitter pill.
PS I hope the new benefits will be calculated automatically for the beneficiaries and the administration will not have pensioners running from social security department to social security department to collect a mountain of papers and an ocean of stamps and signatures confirming that they were receiving EKAS, they lost it and now they are beneficiaries for the new benefits…
