CBS shows
With figures recently released by the Central Bureau of Statistics, last morning AVP faction leader Mike Eman showed how both pensioners and low-income people are lagging behind in shocking reports.
This country created an AOV and every time the AOV was measured on how it meets basic needs so that people can be sure that they have bread on the table, that they can afford their homes, that they can afford their necessities, the pension fund was there to make sure that this AOV was as affordable as possible.
However, today the figures we have from CBS indicate that there are 22,000 pensioners and when you look at what a pensioner has in income and see it is the “living minimum”, every pensioner from 2022 will fall 700 florins behind every month to pay for their needs.
These are things that started in 2017 that came from doubling the BBO, initially from three to six on three levels that equates to an 18% increase in the cost of living of our citizens and then it went up by 1% to finally become a 3% increase and now the government is going to put an additional 7% on the border.
CBS shows that from 2017 a person with a minimum wage or a pensioner could have a deficit of 200 to 300 florins, taking the “Reparatietoeslag”, this would become a deficit of 150 florins but today in 2022, this deficit for an employee with a minimum wage, is 713 florins and for a pensioner this deficit is 800 to 1000 florins and this when it comes to a person living alone.
If it is two people living together, it will be much more and this is the reality that Aruba is living and for this reason since August 2022, the AVP faction has requested a public meeting of Parliament to discuss this serious issue.
During the discussion of the 2023 budget, the AVP faction submitted an alternative budget calling for an increase in the “Reparations budget” to cover these deficits, we asked for an increase in the budget, so that those who have it, can cover the mentioned deficits.
We took money out of the government in services so we didn’t have to take medicine out of our grandparents, yet the government’s choice was to go down this path, step by step, by fracturing the social network we created for our people.
An income that covers enough for basic income, since the minimum wage is far from being able to cover, a pension that covers the basic expenses, since the pension cannot cover far from the basic expenses of a family.
Everywhere those who have to meet their needs, every day feel that not only food, not only clothing, not only transportation, but when the child has to go to school, the school fees are also increased.
When they have to go for their medicine, they also have to put money in and the consequence of that is when you take the figures from the Central Bureau of Statistics and these are not AVP or Mike Eman’s figures but CBS’s figures which clearly show that if you take the 25 thousand people which is 56.6% of those who have a service agreement, they earn 2500 florins or less.
All these people are running deficits of 700 guilders a month that CBS has recorded which means that in our world of employees, 25 thousand are living below the minimum wage, in this country, which is something very serious but which the government does not want to attend to and does not want to help the people”, AVP leader Mike Eman showed yesterday morning in Parliament.