Officials try to speed up pension payments


Government officials Tuesday visited two sites of the Single Social Security Entity (EFKA), the country’s consolidated social security and pension fund, to be briefed on steps taken to speed up the awarding of pensions to recently retired employees.

The aim is to reach 30,000 final decisions on pension awards per month, a significant improvement in a process that used to take years and left new retirees getting being paid a pittance while awaiting the decision on how much their pension was worth.

There are still 300,000 pending applications for main and additional pensions, as well as one-off retirement bonuses, which have been drastically reduced in recent years, following Greece’s financial crisis.

Officials fear a new, and final wave, of applications for early retirement to which a few remaining employees still have the right while being entitled to a pension higher than the minimum.