Socialist leader Edi Rama said that the SP's objective is a minimum pension of 200 euros and a maximum of 400 euros. He also criticized the opposition, saying that their promises are leading people towards the abyss.
"First, we have taken a step beyond indexations that are legal, mandatory, and are done continuously as required by law. We have even done it twice a year due to rising prices.
We have decided that since we are now in a phase of stable economic growth, and we have income that exceeds forecasts, we have decided to allocate a bonus for pensioners, which is the end-of-year and spring bonus, both together from December to February of this year, we have allocated 165 million euros just for pensioners.
It is not a small amount for the Albanian state. We will do this based on economic growth. We have also set two other milestones, because at the end of the day, despite the fact that from a logical point of view we are making a scheme that is sustainable, the increase in contributions has also come in a sustainable manner, we have added 300 thousand more contributors. Today, social security is not played with like it used to be, when no one even asked us to achieve a minimum pension of 200 euros.
So, regardless of whether you have worked or not, the minimum should be 200 euros and for those insured, we should have an average pension of 400 euros. These are the two objectives. Whoever tells you otherwise has two reasons.
We have approached this work from all sides. We have received expertise from all sides, from institutions such as the World Bank, from independent international experts, the advisor I have for the economy who was the head of Merkel's economic group for 10 years, we have also asked him to give us his opinion, Professor Richardo Houseman, I am telling you that what we have set as an objective is ambitious.
It's not easy, but we will do our best to achieve it. The others they tell you are the road to the abyss, or because they don't have a problem with this road, and you know who it is and you know it well, that's why you have set the limit far away. It's not here, it's the limit in time because you are from Gjirokastra and you know the pencil better than others, there's no chance of it breaking. Or then they don't know what they're talking about."
Socialist leader Edi Rama said that when he took office, teachers were 'hostages' of politics. He said that there used to be nearly 5,000 teachers working outside their profile. He said that by 2030, they aim to increase the average teacher salary to 1,200 euros.
"The problem of teachers was a problem of authority, fallen to the ground. Teachers had become hostages of politics, of the scoundrels around the school and of the students themselves who were perverted and had no security for their jobs. Today they would teach under Asim Zeneli, tomorrow they would be thrown somewhere else because a teacher who did not even have the relevant education would come. When we started this work, there were about 5 thousand teachers without the relevant education, who had biology and taught physics because they had a brother-in-law, a party or who knows what. They paid lek or I don't know.
The average salary at that time in the public system was 370 euros, today we have 1 thousand euros. For teachers, the average salary was 950 euros and our plan is to have it be 1200 euros. You have heard that they say they have no program. We do not have a program, but a program and a governing plan in every sector because we are negotiating with the EU. How does the EU negotiate with a country that does not have a program?" said Rama.