Some publish facts and reports based on analysis, others deny that they do so and
"get it out" that they work responsibly and have no fault in keeping insurence
documentation. Whatever the truth, it is obvious that there are omissions and it is
definitely time for the Pension and Disability Insurance Fund (PDIF) to start keeping
accurate and timely records of policyholders.
The State Audit Office (SAO) noted that as of June 17, 2019, there were 4,210
retirement age gaps in retirement age due to inadequate registration of PDIF
documents. Mostly, these are employees of already liquidated companies, whose
documents are not even in the State Archive. PDIF immediately responded with a
disclaimer that they were not guilty, unable to enter data on some insurers due to the
lack of mechanisms to prove paid pension contributions for the insurance period, i.e.
lack of documents.
However, PDIF did not explain why many insurers, for which companies paid
pension insurance contributions, do not have records, which is particularly relevant
for the period when data were manually entered in PDIF. Many citizens have faced
and are facing this problem at a time when they need to retire. Well, they themselves
are looking for documents. If they find them in the Archive, fine. If not, the years of
service are gone, and thus the actual amount of pension they have to receive, but
also prolongs the time of first payment while completing the paperwork.
The SAO came out with even more frightening data that the PDIF had paid almost €
4 million in pensions to already deceased persons. PDIF has denied and stated that
the information is incomplete, and the amount of 241,604 thousand denars is for
recorded receivables from 2007, as of 31.12.2018. PDIF also stated that in order to
overcome this problem in 2016 it signed an Agreement for electronic exchange of
data on deceased persons with the Registry Office, and previously had no other way
to obtain data unless a family member reported death, or did not apply for a solidarity
fund payment.
So, until three years ago, PDIF had no way of confirming whether or not the person
receiving the pension was dead?!
However, the SAO reported that as of September 30, 2018, there had been
outstanding contributions of EUR 69 million, most of PDIF's claims being for
companies that are in liquidation or bankruptcy, or whose accounts are blocked and
on hold. Some of these assets have been written off due to default. 19.5m euros
were written off in 2018 alone. The report also states that receivables on an unpaid
contribution expire in 10 years, meaning that those before the gross wage concept
are already outdated at the end of 2018.
From 1977 to 2005, the Fund entered the data manually. Until 1992, microfilm
technology was used to archive documentation, and for the period 1996 to 2005
archiving was done by scanning M applications. The Fund has no archived
documents for submitting M applications for the period 1992-1996. According to
some analysis, of the 2,594 microfilm rolls, 32 percent have been digitized so far,
with another 1,316 remaining processing rolls with over 7 million documents. How
this problem will be overcome and when all the data is entered remains uncertain.
It is well known that the Pension and Disability Insurance Fund has been operating in
deficit for years and that a significant percentage of the state budget is dedicated to
the payment of pensions. It is well known that any government borrowing, outside or
at home by banks, follows before the payment of pensions. According to some
calculations, about 30 to 40 percent of the budget is transferred to the MoLSP for
pensions and other social transfers, which has been imposed for years as a very
serious problem by economists, and according to politicians, everything is controlled
and planned, and there’s no room for panic about pension payments.
In addition, PDIF was shaken by frequent affairs, the latest being in early 2019, when
it was announced that 19 million euros had not been transferred to the second
pension pillar. Well, after the intervention of the MLSP, 12,000 insured people were
paid back in six months. No one gave details of what exactly happened to the
money, nor did claim responsibility for the affair.
