Cairo: After more than 35 years in civil service, Ahmad Mandour, now a retiree, has to struggle with life with a monthly pension of 550 Egyptian pounds (Dh361.5).
"My wife and I have to survive with this money amid soaring cost of living and ever-increasing prices of almost everything," Mandour, 68, complains.
Mandour is one of thousands who have joined the General Federation for Retirees, Egypt's first independent union for pensioners. Since its launch on October 8, the union has attracted around 500,000 members, according to its founders. Pensioners are estimated at 10.4 million in this country of 80 million.
The fledgling union's members demand the Egyptian government to treat pensioners on equal footing with public sector employees in terms of a social bonus, an annual pay raise offered by the government to help employees cope with rising cost of living. At present, retirees get paid less than the 10 per cent the public employees collect every year.
"The monthly public sector pension hardly exceeds 2 million Egyptian pounds, while many governmental employees earn hundreds of thousands of pounds under the guise of allowances and bonuses," Al Badri Fargahli, a leftist activist, and the chairman of the union, told Gulf News.
The idea for creating the union was conceived after Egypt cancelled the Ministry of Social Insurance, he said.
