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Fiji Pensioners

~ GREY POWER

Fiji Pensioners

Monthly Archives: August 2011

Can’t Remember ?

31 Wednesday Aug 2011

Posted by fijipensioners in Daily Humour

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An elderly couple had dinner at another couple’s house, and after eating, the wives left the table and went into the kitchen. The two gentlemen were talking, and one said, “Last night we went out to a new restaurant and it was really great. I would recommend it very highly.” 
The other man said, “What is the name of the restaurant?” 
The first man thought and thought and finally said, “What is the name of that flower you give to someone you love? You know… The one that’s red and has thorns.” 
“Do you mean a rose?” 
“Yes, that’s the one,” replied the man. He then turned towards the kitchen and yelled, “Rose, what’s the name of that restaurant we went to last night?” 

Advertisement

Greying population gives us a golden opportunity

31 Wednesday Aug 2011

Posted by fijipensioners in Articles & Reports

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EVERY day the world’s population becomes greyer and does so more rapidly than the previous day. About four decades from now, seniors on every continent will exceed the number of young, an event that has no parallel in the history of humanity and has the potential to cause an economic revolution unless all nations take steps immediately to take advantage of the changes.

http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/opinion/greying-population-gives-us-a-golden-opportunity/story-e6frg6zo-1226122399202

From Mohan Lal, FNPF beneficiary

30 Tuesday Aug 2011

Posted by fijipensioners in Letters

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It is a moral obligation for the Society to take care of the aged and infirm. IN Australia & NZ the tax payer pays the dole. A clear subsidy.

FNPF was set up to ensure care of the people in their twilight years.

2.      FNPF says that it set the 55 as the age of retirement as the life expectancy in 1965 was 60.

Ok, then they should have adjusted the retirement age as done elsewhere. They did not do it and can still do so.

See the table below:

FIJI LIFE EXPECTANCY HISTORY

World Rank

Male Female All

M

F

All

1960 54.0 58.2 56.0

75

74

74

1970 58.0 62.2 60.0

81

81

82

1980 62.0 66.2 64.0

79

84

84

1990 64.6 68.8 66.7

89

99

97

2000 65.4 69.7 67.5

103

111

108

2009 68.2 73.4 70.7

105

106

107

The failure to take action in time was not members’ fault. The present retirement age should be in order of 60-65.

3.      Fixed Pension & Inflation:

Since 1999, when the 25% was cut off to finally 15%, the inflation has accumulated to 70%.

See table below:

Inflation Rates Accumulated.

Year                   Rate                  Accumulation

1998                           5.7                                105.7

1999                           2.0                                107.814

2000                           1.1                                108.999

2001                           4.3                                113.68

2002                           0.8                                114.596

2003                           4.2                                119.409

2004                           2.8                                122.75

2005                           2.4                                125.699

2006                           2.5                                128.84

2007                           4.8                                135.0259

2008                           7.7                                145.422

2009                           3.7                                150.8

2010                           5.5                                159.097

2011                           7.0 (EST)                     170.23                          

 170-100 (start) = 70%.

As a result our buying power has actually already reduced to 30%. In some countries dole is subject to adjustment by inflation rate.

4.      FNPF needs to re-look itself. What is the ratio between staff to Membership? Compare this with say Singapore on whose model Fiji system works. It needs to improve return on investment and reduce its overhead.

5.      Finally, they need also to raise the contributions made by members. This will ensure that the members when they retire at lower rate in future, they can sustain themselves. In addition, they should also ensure that members do not take away their retirement benefits now.

Grey Power commentary
Thanks Mohan for this contribution. One of the things pensioners never did with respect to the FNPF benefits is calculate just how much we lost in inflation over the years since we took our pensions. Other countries such as the USA have a COLA adjustment granted annually to our pensions. If the FNPF wants to review the Act we should make submissions that our pensions from henceforth be COLA adjusted.

 Grey Power.

Attitude is Everything

30 Tuesday Aug 2011

Posted by fijipensioners in Grey Power Editor

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Attitude is everything.

Be kinder than necessary,

For everyone you meet is fighting some kind of battle.

Live simply,

Love generously,

Care deeply,

Speak kindly,

And pray continually.

Life isn’t about waiting for the storm to pass…

It’s about learning to dance in the rain.

It’s not what you gather, but what you scatter that tells what kind of life you have lived.

Life is too short to wake up with regrets.

Emergency Run

30 Tuesday Aug 2011

Posted by fijipensioners in Daily Humour

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Mick Flaherty had supped more Guinness than enough and had stumbled out of Quinn’s bar and into the Sunday afternoon air.

As his drunken eyes squinted to adjust to the light, an ambulance went by at great speed. Blue lights flashing and siren blaring, it roared up the street with Mick in full flight running after it.

A hundred yards, 200, 300, almost a quarter of a mile he tracked it until suddenly, lungs and legs giving out, he fell into the gutter.

Then with his very last ounce of breath he roared: ‘You can keep your damned ice cream!’

Nuns sue Boston Archdiocese over retirement funds

30 Tuesday Aug 2011

Posted by fijipensioners in Articles & Reports

≈ 1 Comment

Grey Power comment

Clearly Trustees all over the world are being sued for mismanagement of pension funds and failure to account;  the Catholic Church is no exception.

This story should be a lesson to the FNPF ‘Board’ which is not appointed according to section 3  of the FNPF Act, as David Burness has already informed the Board members and the Minister of Finance by letter dated 25th July 2011.

Can the FNPF Board make decisions to reduce the beneficiaries’ pensions if the members of the Board have not been properly appointed? This is one of the questions that the Burness case has asked the Court to determine.
Continue reading →

Hard of Hearing ?

29 Monday Aug 2011

Posted by fijipensioners in Daily Humour

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An old man decided his old wife was getting hard of hearing. So he called her doctor to make an appointment to have her hearing checked. The doctor said he could see her in two weeks, and meanwhile there’s a simple, informal test the husband could do to give the doctor some idea of the dimensions of the problem.
“Here’s what you do. Start about 40 feet away from her, and speak in a normal conversational tone and see if she hears you. If not, go to 30 feet, then 20 feet, and so on until you get a response.”
So that evening she’s in the kitchen cooking dinner, and he’s in the living room, and he says to himself, “I’m about 40 feet away, let’s see what happens.”
“Honey, what’s for supper?”
No response.
So he moves to the other end of the room, about 30 feet away. “Honey, what’s for supper?”
No response.
So he moves into the dining room, about 20 feet away. “Honey, what’s for supper?”
No response.
On to the kitchen door, only 10 feet away. “Honey, what’s for supper?”.
No response.
So he walks right up behind her. “Honey, what’s for supper?”
“For the fifth time, CHICKEN!”

Diary of a Debt Advisor

29 Monday Aug 2011

Posted by fijipensioners in Articles & Reports

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Grey Power says:
This story is about pensioners in the UK who fell on hard times due to their circumstances. Imagine what would have happened if the pensions of this elderly couple had also been cut by the UK Government as is planned for Fiji’s FNPF beneficiaries.
Everyone knows that Fiji’s pensioners are always helping their own children who may have fallen on hard times. After all we are in the middle of a recession and people are becoming unemployed all the time, with their retired parents chipping in to help them financially. This makes the pensioners particularly vulnerable as they use up their own savings to help their children.
If our pensions are going to be reduced after they have already been awarded, many pensioners may become victims of loan sharks (and we do know that Fiji has loan sharks in abundance), and suffer the same fate as the UK pensioners in this story.
Grey Power asks FNPF and Government:
 Does the FNPF and Government intend to put in place any ‘debt-management programmes’ to assist pensioners who will fall into debt once their pensions are reduced, in most cases by 64%?.
Grey Power certainly hopes so.
Continue reading →

FNPF Advertisement ‘Sustainable Options’ in Fiji Times page 45 27th August 2011

28 Sunday Aug 2011

Posted by fijipensioners in Articles & Reports

≈ 2 Comments

Grey Power Commentary

Grey Power continues to be surprised at the number of FNPF advertisements appearing in the daily newspapers. Presumably these are paid advertisements, though the Saturday August 27th full page colour spread does not say ‘paid advertisement’ at the top of the page like the others did- this one could have been printed with the compliments of the Fiji Times, perhaps?

In any event, the contents of the August 27th advertisement are yet another example of the blinkered vision of the FNPF Trust and management. The complicated and verbiose text in the advertisement serves to further confuse the issues for the readers and, no doubt, is an expression of the confusion that reigns within the FNPF on how to resolve the pension scheme hot potato it finds itself suddenly holding.

One thing that strikes Grey Power is the guilt trip that FNPF in its advertisements continues to push the pensioners to go on, eg ‘Pensioners’ benefits are being subsidized by the current members’, and ‘so who should pay?’ (for the current benefits we guess this means)- the‘pensioners’ or the ‘current members’?

The choices FNPF gives are only two –  pensions can be paid by the pensioners themselves ( by accepting cuts) or by the current members subsidizing. But what if there are other choices? David Burness affidavits have been filed in court and served to FNPF and Government- perhaps the FNPF management should take the trouble to read about other options proposed. And to use their imagination, for a change.

Grey Power has the following questions for the FNPF and Government:

Question 1: how can reducing 1100 pensions (most in the 75 plus age group) help FNPF get out of the mess it created for itself? About 89% (below $800 pm) of the pensions will not now be touched as FNPF said in a previous advertisement. Surely FNPF cannot be saved merely by reducing the 1100 remaining pensions?

Question 2: what happened to the investments? How come they did not return what they could have done? We want the books opened please, as beneficiaries are entitled to ask.

Question 3: To FNPF’s question in its advertisement: ‘Who should pay?’, the answer lies within: FNPF and the Government should pay i.e. those who made the decision to lie to the pensioners, take their contributions and invest them badly at the time the contributions were still functional, and not give them any information about their own savings and what FNPF was doing with them when there is no Parliament (where these things could have been debated), and after 2009 when the Constitution, which protected older persons’ human rights, was abrogated leaving them with no recourse whatsoever to obtain information and express their opinion on their own pensions. The poor quality FNPF presentations made around the country do not count as ‘consultations’ and was hardly democratic as FNPF would like to claim. The FNPF management team did not even know how to answer questions from the floor and ignored most of them. In some instances the team’s presentations relied on handwritten graphs.

Last question: Are we ( FNPF beneficiaries and members) paying the salaries of such incompetents in the FNPF management team?  The quality of the relentless series of advertisements shows they may not even be qualified to hold these management posts. 

 

To see an illustration of the FNPF advertisement, click Continue Reading >

Continue reading →

Feeling Lonely ?

28 Sunday Aug 2011

Posted by fijipensioners in Daily Humour

≈ 2 Comments

Last week Miss Smith checked into a motel on her 70th birthday and she was a bit lonely. She thought, “I’ll call one of those men you see advertised in phone books for escorts and sensual massages.” She looked through the phone book, found a full page ad for a guy calling himself Tender Tony – a very handsome man with assorted physical skills flexing in the photo.
He had all the right muscles in all the right places, thick wavy hair, long powerful legs, a dazzling smile, six pack abs and she felt quite certain she could bounce a ten cent off his well oiled bum… She figured, what the heck, nobody will ever know. I’ll give him a call.

“Good evening, ma’am, how may I help you?…” Oh my, he sounded sooo sexy! Afraid she would lose her nerve if she hesitated, she rushed right in, “Hi, I saw your ad in the yellow pages and understand you give a great massage. I’d like you to come to my motel room and give me one. No, wait, I should be straight with you. I’m in town all alone and what I really want is sex. I want it hot, and I want it now. Bring implements, toys, rubber, leather, whips, everything you’ve got in your bag of tricks. We’ll go hot and heavy all night – tie me up, cover me in chocolate syrup and whipped cream, anything and everything. I’m ready!! Now how does that sound?”

He said, “That sounds absolutely fantastic, but you need to dial “9” for an outside line Miss Smith.”

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