We encourage comments on our publications, the following are some of last week’s comments:

Cutting the pensions of a few hundred pensioners is not the long term answer to the woes of the FNPF. It is a short term, knee jerk reaction by a board and management team who are incapable of planning for the future.

Of course the FNPF needs restructuring and there are a great many factors to be taken into consideration for future retirees.
Future pensions should have basic medical benefits and should be cost of living indexed. This is within the abilities of the fund if it is properly structured and not run by greedy incompetents.
Why should people who have worked all their lives, be cast off by the society which they contributed to, that would be a criminal act by the society they live in.
The current FNPF management is acting like a pack of wild dogs, that drive off the weak and sick from their pack because they are no longer fit for hunting.
What the FNPF needs at this time is people of vision, not a pack of dogs howling and snarling.
CASSANDRA 

On FT Letters
I read the letter as well and am convinced that it was written by some ball polisher from FNPF. As for the Fiji Times, everyone knows that some journalists seems to have a soft spot for Taito. I remember that during Taito’s charade in the name of submissions, a Fiji Times journalists heaped him with praises for being calm despite all criticisms. She forgot to think outside the box and reason that Taito was calm as he had no answer to give for all the misappropriations. This same journalists if I recall claimed for maintenance payment from Taito’s father -in law for a child while he was ruling Fiji after dooming this country into the coup culture. As for Ms. Fatu, she is a selfish lady who is very unchristian as she doesn’t care about the effects that the reduction in pension will have on the pensioners. For her, 11% is just a number. She doesn’t feel the pain of others. She should consult her bible again especially the part where its spelled out that “do unto others what you want done to you….”. She says that we should save the ship before it sinks. FYI Ms. Fatu, the problem is not the ship but the pilot, engineers and the crews. You need to save the ship from them and not the poor pensioners who did no wrong to deserve such cruel treatment. The pensioners did not make senseless decisions that resulted in the loss of 330 million. The pensioners did not tell FNPF to invest in the Momi project which is now rotting away. The pensioners had no hand in FNPF recruiting experts and expensive management companies to manage the Natadola and Momi projects. And last but not the least, the pensioners had no hand in allowing buffet lunches for staffs and families of the hotel and golf course in Natadola and interest free loans to ex-GM and his deputy (who by the way has done a runner to NZ). The pensioners also had no hand in wasting FNPF’s money on staff training as a result of recruitment of unworthy staff on whom you know basis. So why punish the pensioners.
JOHNNY YEE 

Good on you, Johnny. That is exactly right. Have you noticed that FNPF is on a back foot lately? It stubbornly wants not to lose face by not backtracking from its proposal so its advertisements are becoming something of a broken down record; and incoherent also. I think the boys at the helm (not a single woman on Board) are uneducated, ill-informed carpetbaggers. Did you know that Ajith Kodagoda the FNPF chairman has also 2 other jobs (3 if you count his job with CJ Patel- what do they want out of this I wonder); Kodagoda is head of ATH (ah ha- didn’t they take money from FNPF?) ; and wait for it- FIRCA. What, you say? I do too.

Pensioners have every right to ask the President for a Commission of Inquiry.
La Passionara

Fijipensioners Grey Power thought that pensioners of Fiji would be interested to read the recently published article written by Trish Power on what a comfortable retirement  would mean if we were living in Australia.

The lifestyle choices of pensioners in Australia may be different from pensioners of Fiji but the basic needs that pensioners have to meet in both countries are the same- we still have to pay for all the essentials of life after retirement.

Most people before they retire (usually about 10-15 years beforehand) start looking at their likely costs after retiring and plan accordingly. Many pay off their mortgages or other debts at an accelerated rate and do other things to start putting their retirement plans into effect after calculating what they will get as retirement income (in our case FNPF income).

By proposing to cut the pensions of people already retired the FNPF and Government will plunge the elderly people of our country into a crisis which, at their age in life, they cannot be expected to handle. The FNPF pension is not inflation adjusted and therefore already pensioners face annual diminishing returns on their original pension amounts. 

Grey Power
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—By Kevin Drum

Via Paul Krugman,Dean Baker has a paper out today that explains why state pension funds are in trouble: It’s the recession, stupid. The entire shortfall can be attributed to stock market losses and underfunding in just the past four years:

Figure 1 projects pension fund assets if pensions had continued to earn on average a 4.5 percent nominal rate of return in the period since the end of 2007. Under this  assumption, state and local pension fund assets would have been $857 billion higher at the end of the third quarter of 2010.
…. In the period since the beginning of the recession, annual payments into state and local pension funds have averaged $6.9 billion less than withdrawals. By contrast, in the three years prior to the downturn, payments averaged $18.4 billion more than withdrawals. If state and local governments had continued to contribute to their pensions at the same rate as they had in the prior three years, then the total assets of these funds would be $77 billion higher than was reported at the end of the third quarter of 2010. Adding this to the $857 billion figure above results in an additional $934 billion in pension funds, a figure far higher than most estimates of the size of state and local government shortfalls.

On Thursday we drew peoples attention to the fact that the Fiji Times had published a letter from an admirer of FNPF management, when they had to date declined to publish letters from pensioners.

It is possible that the FT editor has had a change of heart since a letter that did not endorse FNPF actions was published in Fridays columns of the Fiji Times and another today, Saturday 27 August.

It the interest of fairness, and for those of you who may have not seen the letters we copy them here:
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ISLAMABAD –  The Human Rights Association of Pakistan on Wednesday submitted a writ petition in the Islamabad High Court (IHC) seeking the resolution of the problems faced by retired people in obtaining pension. Human Rights Association President M Kowkab Iqbal argued in the petition that the financial support to the needy was being provided under the Benazir Income Support Programme at their doorsteps, but the people who had served the country for a considerable period of their life had to stand in queues for long hours to receive their pension.
“They are old people and the government should not dishonour them by making them wait in long queues outside banks and other relevant places, which is a violation of Article 9 of the constitution,” she contended. Making the government of Pakistan a respondent, the petitioner asked the court to take notice of the issue. The court accepted the writ petition for a regular hearing to be held on the coming Friday.