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Thousands of Italians protest pension laws

Sunday, 03 April 2016 3:23 PM [ Last Update: Sunday, 03 April 2016 6:20 PM ]

Italian pensioners demonstrate in Rome, demanding review of pensions reform law on April 2, 2016.

Thousands of Italian pensioners have staged protests in several major cities, calling for the immediate review of an unpopular pension law, PressTV reports.

The pensioners took to the streets of Rome, Naples, Venice and several other cities, calling for the review of the law introduced in 2011 by then Prime Minister Mario Monti.

The law, allegedly rife with injustice and a cause of unemployment, was adopted to stabilize the country’s finances, raise the age of retirement to 62 for women and 66 for men and freeze the indexation of pension to the inflation rate.

Under the law, men can take retirement after working for 42 years, and women after 41 years.

“The message to the government is quite straightforward, workers aged 69 or 70 cannot continue to work forever and provide their unemployed sons and grandchildren an accommodation at the same time,” said Anna Maria Furlan, the secretary general of an Italian union confederation.

The high retirement age has left some 300,000 Italian people without job or pension. There have been several aid packages for those affected but the problem has not resolved yet.

“They stripped us of our dignity, I have enough of sacrifices, and what about my sons, Italy’s youths, what will they do?,” said a pensioner protester.

Italy has 18.1 million pensioners, 63.1 percent of whom (11.5 million people) receive pensions of under 750 euros a month.

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